Prison Journal: Day 7,886
March 13, 2009
This morning I felt heavy with sadness when I woke. After all of the days, weeks, months, and years I have served, I am totally adjusted to prison. If I set my mind to focus exclusively on my writing, exercise, and reading, I easily could coast through the remaining three to four years that I’m scheduled to serve. I could serve those thousand-plus days in an isolated cell without a whimper; I could serve them in a high-security penitentiary with rape and murder always a holler away. The time in confinement no longer affects my prison adjustment. I’m well conditioned to cope with prison.
The strategy that guides and empowers me is to set clearly defined goals that I control. One goal, for example, is to write every day. Another is to exercise every day. As long as I work toward the goals I set, I obliterate some of the control that outside forces have over my life. My key, or the essential component to my feeling of empowerment, comes with my setting a purpose toward which I can stay in constant pursuit. The only time I fall into an emotional trap, or pit, is when I surrender some of that control. It is why I know that I will struggle with sadness all day.
I am sad because I will not visit with Carole today. She is my oxygen because I allow myself the pleasure of loving her, and because God has blessed me with her love. Rather than focusing on the 1,000 days of confinement ahead, I live my life from one visiting day to the next. I have trained myself to live as if I’m swimming beneath the current, and the Friday visits with Carole represent my single opportunity to come up for air. Today I will not have any air.
The reason we’re not visiting today is because Carole is scheduled to work. Had I told her that I needed her, I know that she would have come. As a nurse, however, she has a responsibility and I wanted her to honor it; I could cope with the sadness. I could erase it completely, but doing so would require me to live without love. I prefer to accept the life that comes with our marriage, and sometimes that means inviting sadness. In time, I remind myself, prison will end and we’ll be together. For now I must focus on holding my breath and making it through to the next visiting day.
I began writing at 3:00. By 7:00 I had completed four blog articles and I put my writing gear away. Producers from Good Morning America had contacted Carole yesterday with regard to my work. They were compiling content for the Bernard Madoff story and had found my work as a useful resource. A producer contacted Carole to determine whether I could be of service. As a prisoner, administrators control my access to the media. Since I could not be a timely source, the producers asked Carole whether she could help. She put the producer in touch with Joe Reddick, a friend I made in a previous prison where we both were confined. The producer sent a car and driver so Joe could make an in-studio appearance to consult on how Madoff would serve his time.
As I watched Joe appear on the morning news segment, I felt proud of Carole for the role she played in coordinating the effort. Our work is becoming a national resource in a specific niche, and I feel blessed to work together with my wife to create these opportunities. After the show I went out to run five miles, bringing my total to 830 miles over the past 91 days. In the afternoon I wrote three additional blog articles, then I spent two more hours proofing the manuscript on which I’ve been working. I was lying on my rack by 6:00, and asleep by 6:30 p.m..
Friday, 13 March 2009
Related posts:
- Prison Journal: Day 8,281
- Prison Journal: Day 8,033
- Prison Journal: Day 8,012
- Prison Journal: Day 7,942
- Prison Journal: Day 7,885
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