(Prison) Time
In prison parlance, one would say I have been locked up a couple of “minutes.” Here, 10 years is considered a respectable stretch: a “minute.”
Much like having a nightmare while in a coma, there is no waking up to make it end. Sometimes I look up to realize another day has passed. But it was so similar to the previous one … and the one before that … and all the ones before that. Here, the only thing that really sets one day apart from another is its number designation on a calendar.
I recognize the elasticity of prison time. My desire for it to hurry up and pass causes it to stretch so taut I fear it will snap like a whip on my back, which is already bowed under the weight of the many mistakes I have made in my life. Yet when I try to force myself not to think about time’s passage, it hangs limp, endless.
Time, like gravity, is entirely beyond my influence. Time has made it abundantly clear that my ability to exercise patience — or not to — doesn’t sway it in the least.
In 1996, I was arrested for murder. I was then sentenced to 50 years of confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison system.
Combat vets, police officers and other professionals often make jokes about their tough and painful work experiences to try to lessen the impact on their personal lives and hold on to their sanity. Similarly…
