Bright Spot.
I am a lot stronger emotionally today than ever before. I know what makes me tick, and what things, emotional, intellectual, and physical work to make me stronger in all three areas.
For example, while walking is primarily a physical activity, it certainly helps clear the cobwebs out of both the intellectual and emotional parts of my brain. Eating low fat/high protein food certainly affects all three areas. When I know what works, I look at what my current resources are and design the best support system I can.
I do not know if I can explain it adequately enough, but let me try. There is no one here that I can really have an intelligent conversation with. I write to you, and get back comments and more questions. I have no one to help bleed off some of the excessive emotional energy that is inside me.
I end up seeking some validation of my humanity from other inmates. While still not being able to tame the excess energy. This then leads me into a somewhat subservient position and that does little to relieve the original problem, it only adds to it. If I was at Club Fed, I would be in with Dr. G or at the least be able to kick it around with Mike, my walking partner.
It is now 8.15 PM and I have filled out my commissary list. I am getting five additional twenty-three cent stamps (fifteen total) in addition to the twenty thirty-sevens. Also ordering eight large envelopes. I am buying enough of the fixings to make four of the been meals. The other two guys have less the $3.00 to spend.
I really am not in that a great position to share, but for now the guys are friendly enough to share with. Bill, will be getting packages from the outside and Tom may eventually get some money in. I am not spending much time with the two of them and am not trying to buy their friendship. More along the lines that we can work together on the food and all three benefit.
Getting forty-eight cans of soda. That will give me three a day. Wonder if the extra caffeine will help with my typing. It does not hurt.
Okay, my twenty-three cent stamp comment may have been a little out of line. I am troubled by the feeling that you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can understand your wife not wanting me around. No problem. My perception of the portrayal of me being a shady character is discomforting.
I am honest with you; I share my thoughts with you, and am reluctant to discuss some things in detail only because of the emotional energy required and the lack of resources to deal with it.
I have a very high appreciation and respect for you and what you have done with your life. I am pretty sure I have mentioned that certainly one major change in my personality has been the loss of my sense of entitlement.
One of the sub headings was the sense that others with money should give me money because of some misplaced sense of "justice." I no longer feel that way and understand clear boundaries as to what is yours is yours, and conversely what is mine is mine.
I realize this actually has helped me in, I have less guilt when I decide to withhold my resources, be it time or money, from others around me. The other byproduct is that I also realize that what I do have is of value.
While it has been mentioned on the blog a number of times that I have a lot of time, the fact is I have the same twenty-four hours as everybody else. All the time I have been spending on the typewriter over the last two weeks has drastically cut into my reading time! I finally finished a book yesterday, and when I went to write it in the log, it was my first entry in almost two weeks.
I thought I made it clear from the get-go that I was not expecting you to pay for the food. I thought I was going to be at Downstate for many months. True, you may not be able to ask much from me, but you certainly enjoy my writing, and are quick to complain if a few days go by and you do not have a letter from me. Yes I do realize that reading all I write takes time also, and I am grateful and comforted by the fact that you do read all I write.
I do feel you benefit from a lot of the stories of prison life I pass on. You do not owe me anything for them. I am not sure you understand the high emotional cost to me, giving you some of the details of my life. They are incredibly painful memories and if I was to constantly dwell on the time I must spend in prison, it would no longer be a life worth living! I must have a portion of my emotional self believe in the act of redemption.
If not, do I simply exit prison, lie down on the road, and wait for the cars to run over me? Am I to be a "freak show" while in prison. Please understand I am not ranting against you. This what a good relationship does, it has a give and take. I am not looking for someone to "blow smoke up my panties" as Reverend Paul once mentioned. By the way I did get a letter from him a week ago that I have still not answered because of all the typing I have been doing.
While on the one hand I have lots of free time, between my paper reading and typing, my days are full. I could do option 2 and cancel the paper, forget about writing as much, and go back to reading a book a day. Actually I have not finished a novel in over a week now.
I am busy. It has gotten so that if I am not at the table typing, three or four inmates are quick to point out my absence.
The question keeps coming back to what am I and what is my worth. Tom is the Hispanic guy on the next bunk, I am not sure his exact crime but his victims are suing him for 14 million dollars.
Yen it is like the question my Dad asks, "Can you love the sinner, but not the sin?" My mom and dad send money, write occasionally, visit, and say they love me. Other family members refuse to acknowledge my existence. Yet they are active church members. Where is their spiritual forgiveness?
Well you say that is for everyone but you. If I don't qualify, then put me out of my misery. Do not jerk me around with talk of this or that program I have to take, or surround me with people that have killed others and have less time than me.
Well the packages and mail have been distributed. I did get the Robert Ludlum books and the Civil War Novel you ordered from Amazon. Thank You.
The chaplain at Beckley told me he would always welcome me to his church. Now, was he just blowing smoke? I do not know. I do know we talked deeply on a few occasions and it was his support that had me working in the chapel and working at practicing the piano and organ. I have written about some of the bright stars I have come across on my journey of the last of the eight years.
I know this is harder to read and nowhere near as coherent as some of my typing but I would be lucky if could do minutes per word. Do I have a brain problem, a learning disability? Did that fall off the slide back at in elementary school damage my frontal lobe, said to be the part of the brain that governs behavioral decisions? Why can I sometimes type four of five words with no problem then next minute all the wrong keys?
Even it I have some disability or progressive disease, (I can not spell either), I am not sure what can be done about it under my current conditions. When I know the difference between two and too, why would I type he wrong word? Is it just a common error when the mind wanders while typing? I do not know.
The point? What I did was wrong. Now what. To be honest, a part of me was saying to just forget the appeal. That was before they threw it out and not I did not purposely sabotage the case. It gets to the point where I am getting very tired of constantly having to fight for what is legally right. I will just go ahead and rot away in prison.
You are a bright spot. You provide me with hope that I might be able to exist in the free world someday. That is what 1 hope I might receive with some of the blog readers.
