It’s Do or Die
There comes times in life when no matter what we do some part of use must die.
There I was, only seventeen years old, walking into a real deal correctional facility with a ten year sentence hanging over my life. Fulton Reception and Diagnostic Center, commonly called F.R.D.C. No one could miss the gun tower rising up out of the middle of this rather large prison complex. This is the first prison in Missouri that newly convicted felons go to before being sent to a general population prison. This is the place where they assess everyone to determine where they should serve their sentences. I never really got to see much of the prison from the inside. They only take in inmates in small groups, on certain days. So right off the get, I found myself in a glass lined room with something like twenty other males from all over the state. We all had to surrender all of our possessions, and strip naked. I wasn’t in this prison for ten minutes and I was already primed up for some violence. I was ready to smash the first guy to comment about my ass. You see, prior to that day, many of the jail guards, and even other inmates in the jail had been filling me with fear about what was going to happen to a seventeen year old in prison. I was ready to do some real violence, and there I was already naked. The weeks leading up to this day I would just pace in my jail cell, priming myself for what I had been told was to come. In my mind someone was going to die before a bitch was made out of me. I was ready to make good on it. In those days there were few thoughts to cross my mind which were not utterly violent. My childhood had prepared me for this.
After being strip searched, and given our new prison garb, which was the typical jumpsuit one sees on TV, orange as could be, we were placed in a long hall. There were different small rooms on each side where a correctional officer did their different part of assessing each one of us. Everyone was sitting on the floor along the hall waiting their turn. The guards would just be calling out whoever was next on their list. One room was a shortened version of a physical, but no nurse was involved. I think only guys with actual medical problems found themselves in front of an actual nurse. One room was for inspecting everyone’s property, etc.
Luckily for me the jail I had been in was run just like a prison, so all of my stuff was already copasetic. But while sitting in that room a guy had reached around the corner, and snagged my carton of name brand cigarettes right out of my bag. Right out from under the chair I was sitting on. Cigarettes are one of the most valuable commodities a guy can have in prison. Cigarettes are basically cash money on the inside. Not only that, I smoked like a fucking train. I needed my cigarettes. This guy snagged them right in front of the guard talking to me even slick as could be. Kools. I didn’t even like them, but they were the most valuable to have, and I was ready to get two for one on these. Sometimes I could get three packs of generics for a pack of Kools. Well, it turned out to not be this particular guy’s first time in F.R.D.C. Soon as I realized my shit had been taken I flipped the switch. Temper on deck. In my head I needed to take a stand right from the get. No one was going to take my shit and not have to deal with me. A guard overheard me threatening others, so I caused a scene, and everybody’s shit got searched until my cigarettes were found. This ended up being rather bad news for me because the guy who took my stuff was a legit violent man, and he was also much larger than I, so I had made an enemy that no one wants for an enemy right from the get.
After that the guards took me to a room at the end of the hall, and then proceeded to tell me that I was being taken to the hole. At first I thought it was because of the guy who took my cigarettes, but it wasn’t that.They were checking me in, as they called it because of my mother. I started cussing at the guards because they did that shit right in front of everyone. Pretending they were protecting me, they endangered me. I made sure they knew how stupid they were for that. I was being checked in because it was prison policy that any inmate with a family member who is a C.O., that is a correctional officer, has to go to the hole for their own safety. Inmates will retaliate by getting at the inmate who is the relative of a C.O. Not only was my mother still a C.O. but she had been one in this same prison. At this time though, she was in J.C.C.C. or Moberly maybe, I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. All of her husbands except for my father had been C.O.s too, so they didn’t even hesitate to put me in the hole. These dudes my mother slept with were real deal douche bags, so I can only imagine how many inmates hated them.
This was alarming for several reasons to me. First was that they checked me in right in front of everyone coming in that day, which put the label on my head that I was probably a snitch. Second was that I had already done what was to me a considerable amount of time in solitary confinement, and it wasn’t uncommon to be in F.R.D.C. for months waiting for an opening in a regular prison. Third was that not only was I seventeen, which I had to keep a secret, but now I would also have the extremely negative title of “check in” on my head. Even if I wasn’t a snitch, I was still a check in no matter what I did. I was in a rage over this for a long time.
Last but not least, this time I was in a real deal fucking prison going to the hole on the first day in. I hadn’t been there an hour and I was already going right back into solitary confinement. Just an animal in a cage. My number was 501488. I would be allowed out of my cell for thirty minutes each day to take a shower, walk around some, and get a new book if I wanted; I always wanted a new book. No one was ever allowed near me except prison staff.
This was my first experience as a man. A real deal initiation. First day of my manhood. It was now officially official. I used to like to say, all that time in a cell made a man out of me. No one was coming to rescue me. No one was going to help me. It really happened. I really did happen. Just me myself and I, all alone, sitting in a standard prison cell just like one sees on TV, with a narrow slit of a window on the out facing wall that no man could ever fit through even if he broke out the glass somehow. All steel clanking doors, the cells lining the tiers just like on TV, and the immediate cacophony of prison life. No one was coming to save me. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.
Being in a cell like that one never knows what is going on. There’s one inmate in each cell block that is allowed out during the day, who is basically the guards errand boy. He cleans, and does the things the C.O.s don’t want to do. He’s the barter guy. He makes his living bartering for stuff between inmates. When a fella is allowed out of his cell for his daily thirty minutes he’s not allowed to approach any other inmates cell door. Only the errand boy gets to do that. So it’s always alarming when suddenly there is an actual C.O. standing outside your cell. There’s never any warning at all.
One day the guard is outside my cell, talking on the radio, communicating to open the door. It was time to go start the assessment. They called these people case workers. They did interviews, and tests, using some system or other that they have for determining who goes where. They test all kinds of stuff. One of these interviews was with a woman. That’s a rare happening in prison. One learns what the body of a female can do energetically when one hasn’t been near one for months, and then suddenly is. She was older though, and not attractive, but still I felt the charge of it. It was peculiar. It was something that my body did that wasn’t up to me. Anyways, this woman changed my life. Because of my INFJ stuffs I can always tell what a person’s ulterior motives are. All these other guards, and inmates, giving me “advice” really just loved to cause me fear, but this woman wasn’t trying to make me afraid. I could tell she was being genuine. She looked me right in the eyes and told me that if I didn’t get rid of my temper they were going to kill me in prison. This shook me to my core. She didn’t tell me that to cause me fear. She told me that because she didn’t want me to die. Some woman whom I don’t even know saved my life that day.
It was everything I could do to not be visibly crying before I got back into my cell. I had just received the worst news possible. I had to lose the only thing I had; my temper. It was my main source of protection in life. My only real weapon. I could flip a switch kind of like the Hulk. No one ever wants none of that. It was to me, my only form of protection. I could feel it in my body too, that it had to go, but all that came to me was; who would I be without my temper? In my head I literally was my temper. It was who I was. I was lost. I cried for several weeks mourning the loss of who I thought I was; I did not want to die in prison. I just paced in my cell like an animal having it out with myself. It is amazing how approaching real life death will capitulate the ego. We think we are this thing only to find out we are not.
I didn’t know anything at all about spiritual life at this time. All I had was the lies of the preacher man. This was just happening to me. Life. I was only surviving. I was doing what I had to do to survive, nothing else. It would be a long time before I gained a proper context for what happened to me.
Well, I’ve told this story because of the spiral of life. I am once again, in a prison cell of sorts. Due to the severity of an accident I have been confined to my apartment. The universe has synchronized everything out of my life. Literally everything. It’s literally like being in a cell. I’ve no money. No means of escape. I am again, practically, even if only temporarily, crippled in life. I’ve lost the use of my left arm almost entirely. I’ve got another surgery coming up that will put me back in a sling for six weeks, and then months of rehab after that. The doctor said if all goes well I will have my arm back nine months after the surgery. I’ve already been down four months now. During this upcoming six weeks in a sling I don’t even think I will be able to type. Just like I did in the hole, I’ll go back to noming books like a champion.
This time, this go around the spiral, it’s my rage I must let go of. Rage is something very different than having a violent temper. Rage is an innate feeling. A violent temper is taught. It’s a learned behavior. An ego tactic. Rage though is of the body. This time it wasn’t some woman doing an interview, assessing me, that gave me a heads up. This time it has been my brothers, patiently sitting by my side, loving me, with no ulterior motives, that has been my que. I’ve got to get rid of this rage or I’m going to die. Just like at seventeen with that violent temper; Rage has been my life. Rage has saved my life. I would never have made it without my rage. It was only ever my rage that kept me from capitulating to culture. My rage kept me true to myself at all times. Just like the seventeen year old me, who had only seemingly survived by having a violent temper, I only survived life by holding to my rage. My rage has been righteous; god given. I earned it fair and square. It was always my best friend. So thorough has been my rage that I honestly don’t know who I am without it: now it has to go.
I’m seventeen all over again. This time though, it’s my rage that must go. It is no longer serving me. I am no longer powerless like I once was. No one is abusing me anymore. I’ll be forty six this year, and all my life was nothing but trauma. Abuse. At every turn it is so normalized I just could never get out of it. Even my last relationship, being the best I’ve ever had, only ended up being traumatic. It takes such a long time to workout all the trauma that happens to us as children. It takes such a long time, it’s no wonder really no one ever does it.
I have, however, stayed true to myself, and I have gotten out of it. The trauma cycle is over. I’m older now. A little more wisdom on deck. When I was seventeen I thought that without my violent temper I would lose all my power. It was truly terrifying my situation in life. That was my main fear; that I would no longer have any power, and would just be easy prey. That did not turn out to be the case at all. So now I know, even though it hurts to shed this thing that I thought I was; I will not lose my power. If anything, I am about to be even more powerful. It’s time for me to let all this rage go as I pace in my incredibly fancy cell. Man I’ve got it good this time around.
I may not know who I will be without it. I may not know how this will go exactly. I know for sure I am going to feel lost for a while. Confused. I’m not going to feel safe. I just simply do not have a choice. I mean I do, but I don’t. I could have kept my temper, but that would have been life in prison. That’s what she meant by telling me I would die in prison. Back then I thought she meant that someone would kill me, but what she really meant was that I would be in prison all my life.
This is my third go around in life regarding this particular issue. Seventeen, thirty two, and now at forty five. There are a couple of planets that take as long to orbit the sun. Why would our lives be any different? I’d like to think this will be the last go around about this issue, but I’ve got a lot of life left in me, so who knows. It seems there is just no end to the tears no matter what I do. Such is the life of someone abused as I was abused. Rage be gone.
Spiritually speaking it’s these defining moments when faced with death that we have the greatest chance for transformation. Our ego will almost capitulate for us. You see, either way, when it comes to these moments death is inevitable, because if I chose to not shed my rage I’m still a dead man walking. No matter which option I choose, some part of me is going to die. Here, now, I am choosing the Self, god, my unconscious, instead of my false sense of self. It’s do or die. Change or die. I welcome this. The death may not be a physical one, but it would be a type of death regardless to refuse to change. That just isn’t an option for me.
It is in our lowest moments, that the greatest things break through into the psyche.
I got this sneaky feeling that even without my rage ain’t nobody going to want none of this. Embarrassingly I know my brothers already knew this about me. Sorry fellas, I’m just a dumb monkey like any other, but I’m coming around. Slowly but surely, I’m coming around. Same now as then, pacing in my cell, working it out in my own head, like any monkey who wants to be free should do.
