Interesting observation of the human (well my) psyche over the past week… is it just me or do we seem to think about the beginning when we realize that we are at the end? Now… I am not necessarily at the end of anything at the moment but recently I have noticed that I have been having the “getting out” conversation with guys close to the door in here on a seemingly daily basis. I am also about to officially start RDAP and beginning this journey leads to the reality of a substantial chunk of my sentence being behind me and the final stages in front of me. Both of which leading me to think about the beginning while acknowledging the end.
I found myself thinking about the first day that I walked through these gates and how absolutely insane it is that I have literally not walked out of these gates… not once for almost 4 years. I mean… how is that possible that I have been physically in this location for damn near 4 years… just wandering back and forth… day in and day out… over and over and over again… and I have somehow managed to keep my sanity? Well… that is my hope at least. I thought about driving here with my mom… crossing that bridge… me behind the wheel for the last time… pulling into the parking lot and being met by officers that had no idea why I was here because I “wasn’t on their list”. Only to realize that we had checked into my ‘hotel’ a day early… (mind exploding emoji)… but now that we are on the premises… they can’t let me leave because they are worried I may change my mind in the next 24 hours and not come back. So… let the ride begin. When I close my eyes… I can smell E Unit… the unit that I quarantined in due to arriving during COVID…. and the sound of the water fountain rumbling like a jet engine when someone would get a drink outside my locked cell door. I can feel the anxiety build in my chest when I picture myself pacing back and forth in the 4 feet of open space in front of my bunk… not being able to wrap my mind around the fact that this is my new reality… this is real life. I can imagine myself holding that book on mindfulness that my Aunt sent to me… feverishly reading it while pacing… as my mind calmed itself with each turn of the page. I can see the female officer’s face appear in the 2 x 2 window of my cell door after I had knocked on it periodically for the last 45 minutes because I had a pounding… unmanageable headache. “Hi… Uhh Ma’am… I have a horrible headache… do you have some Tylenol or Advil that I could take please?”… I ask her. She looks at me for a second… a look of utter disbelief mixed with the inner dialogue of trying to figure out if I am being serious or not… then when she realizes that I am dead serious… she begins to uncontrollably laugh at this idiotic ‘inmate’ asking her for Tylenol because “he has a headache”. I bet I made her week being able to tell that story to her fellow officers. Inching closer to this end… I am remember every detail of the beginning…
Then my mental focus shifted… I started thinking about my marriage. Now… said marriage has been over for many years but I don’t know if it was the fact that it would have been our 11 year anniversary this past Saturday or some other force that pulled my thought process this direction but either way… I began to think about the beginning. I thought about college and how I asked her to come out with my friends and I on that Monday night. I thought about the fact that she wasn’t 21 yet so we had to figure out creative ways to get her into the bars. I thought about how I had been steadily and happily single for my entire college experience and then she told me “you’re sweet in the morning” and I no longer wanted to experience life with anyone else but her. I thought about going to that hole in wall sushi place in Chicago where we sat at the bar and Mitch would slide plates of the most delicious sushi to us and we would whisper and laugh to each other for hours. I thought about driving her to work every morning and then getting coffee and thinking about our future together. I thought about packing Lucy up in the backseat… throwing our suitcases in the trunk and heading out for our cross country adventure on New Years Eve to begin the next chapter of our lives together on the West Coast. I thought about a lot of good… a lot of smiles… and a lot of promise. And then… inevitably… I started thinking about all of my bad decisions… and how looking back at it all… how clear it is to me now how ridiculously stupid (for lack of a better word) I was. Seeing the entirety of the relationship “from the end”… it isn’t to say that we would have been happily ever after for the rest of our days… but it didn’t have to be like this. Even outside of my crime… outside of prison… I didn’t come correct in our relationship as the years went by. I blinded myself and lied to myself to rationalize those decisions and actions and I really hate that guy… that version of me… that did those things… because the beginning… the purity of us… was wonderful. I have thought about our relationship continuously over the years… but never with the clarity of feeling that I thought about it over this past week. There is a peace that I found… possibility in the finality of it… again… it has been over for many years… but maybe I hadn’t been able to fully allow myself to believe that… even though intellectually… I knew. And in allowing the reality to settle in… allowing the truth of the present ‘us’ to take a front seat to the nostalgia of the old ‘us’… it allows me to appreciate the then and genuinely accept the now. And even if the now isn’t great… and feels pretty sh*tty at times… it is real life and being able to have the emotional capacity to fully feel every ounce of this life… the good and the bad… is something I am grateful to experience. Just as I am grateful to have experienced the ‘us’ in better times.
I think the lesson lies in reflection and recognizing that no matter how difficult life was or is or seems or gets… there is beauty in the madness. There are good times in bad memories. There are moments of absolute joy. There are memories that will be with us for the rest of our days. There are hard truths discovered through missteps. There is new life born through the journey of our past life. We live. We learn. We love. Some of us make unbelievably horrible choices but even those people… like myself… learn from them and become better because of them. As long as we are honest with ourselves and give ourselves the gift of looking in the rearview with clear eyes when we see a finish line in front of us… I think we are going to be alright. Unfortunately… we do not have the ability to erase or alter our past… but thankfully… we do have the ability to use the past to influence our present. And if we our mindful of today… carrying with us all the smiles and tears of yesterday… we will be better tomorrow.
Take a moment to reflect on what may be ending for you out there… and allow yourself to take a look back. The view is enlightening…
Stay Healthy. Stay Active…
My Mom sent me a song right before I started this journey… Old Dominion… Some People Do…
Some people certain do.