felicia, June 2020

I waited the past 15 yrs and 7 months for the day that I would get to walk out of the fences that help me captive. My mind had been free for a long time but my body was held physically behind the walls that kept me restricted from my potential, my possibilities, my self-fulfillment. I had prepared for this for so long, every scenario that I would be faced with and how I would handle it.

You run through what happens if this happens, or if that happens, what do I do when I run into so and so, what happens if I do this instead of that. That’s the mundane that holds you day in and day out when you are locked up and preparing to release. You take the classes, you prepare for your re-entry back into the community. You prepare for the No’s and the inevitably of the stereotyping and stigma’s you are about to face. BUT nothing prepares you to walk out into a pandemic.

At first I didn’t realize the severity of what was happening. Inside you see things on the news and logically you understand that something is happening but practically you never really comprehend it. You’re secluded behind walls that are meant to keep you invisible and that invisibility works in many facets. It means that you are unseen, we are a population that is closed off because we transgressed the mores of our society. To the "outside world” we are the ones that can be thrown away, the ones that are meant to be exiled because of our actions or inactions. We are the ones that no longer have agency to make decisions about what may affect us. What others fail to realize is that we are human too, we experience loss, grief, helplessness, and most importantly we experience the abandonment of our community. Imagine having a loved one turn their back on you, now amplify that with the whole of society turning its back on you.

The effects of that experience are something that no one will comprehend unless you have experienced it yourself. Now take all that in, compounded with the global pandemic we are experiencing. What is happening to those that are unseen in our society. It's easy for people to write off people in prison because “we deserve” to be there. However, we have been handed down our sentences. We have been given our punishment and we haven’t been sentenced to death. And yet, that is what is happening because in prison, the place that is not to be seen, people cannot practice the safety measures that have been handed down by medical experts, it's nearly impossible with the large populations that reside there.

What does this mean? It means we have to think about how we are to address this problem. What do we do to make sure that we aren’t intentionally causing harm to a vulnerable population that has no agency to help themselves. Is it no wonder that there are riots right now, that there are threats of harm. When you are invisible it takes extreme action to be seen. When you are living in a state of fear the normal response is fight or flight, when you can’t flee the only option you have is to fight. Fight for your safety, fight for the life that you have despite the circumstances you are in.

We are all human and we all want to live. Living looks different for everyone, especially in these times. I think about the people that I left behind in prison, my friends, the ones that I spent the last 15 years and 7 months bonding with, the ones I was invisible with, the ones that I experienced loss, love, and death with. The ones that seen me despite the things I had done in my life and my circumstances, the ones that didn’t allow me to be forgotten.

I sit here and am experiencing profound emotions that I can’t even name all the time. I’m partially free and I had no idea what I was walking into when I left the prison walls. I had no idea the world would be in crisis and I can understand that no one could have predicted this. I am grieving the loss of what I was supposed to be experiencing, the loss of what I had been waiting for for the past 15 years and 7 months.