I’m grateful to have received a loving letter from my mother in today’s mail. These 22 years that I’ve served have been difficult on her, and I’m sensitive to her pain, to her feeling of separation from me, her only son. I’ve spent my entire sentence in various federal prisons, all of which were more than 1,000 miles away from her. We have not visited more than a dozen times in all these years, and telephone restrictions mean that we don’t talk. This separation of mothers and sons, of sisters and brothers, of husbands and wives isn’t normal. Yet after all these years, it’s the only life I know.
I’m sure that I’ll be released within four years, though I know release could come, theoretically, in three years or less. What will I return to? Others may not understand, but I truly feel alone in the world. I have Carole, my incredible wife whom I love with every breath, and who serves every day of this sentence with me voluntarily. Everyone else feels so far away, a lifetime away.
It won’t be long before I will have taken more breaths in prison than I took in freedom. That’s very strange, a distinction of questionable value, and one that I expect few other people can relate to. Oh well. These consequences follow the bad decisions I made during the recklessness of youth.
I spent several hours editing, reading, editing, and reading again. I’m very pleased with the improvements others helped me make to chapter two. I’m going to write tomorrow on chapter six, and likely return to editing on Thursday.
This morning I ran 10 miles. My tally is now 2,019 miles over the past 228 days. The health services department also renewed my allergy pills for 30 days.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
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