From Behind Bars

From Behind Bars

Post scripted by the Hamilton County Jail, a letter from my cousin David was addressed to me. He had just been sentenced to a two year period for a DUI and possession of illegal drugs while on probation. While most find it odd for a 14 year old to receive such a dirt honest letter, I can truly tell you in a cliché manner; it changed my life.

            Having his father run out when David was only four years old and watching his mom struggle through her eight year battle of breast cancer before passing when he was seventeen, David had spent a lot of his time at my house, taking on more of a brotherly figure, rather than just a distant cousin from another state. Living and going to school in Indiana but traveling weekend after weekend, sometimes even during the week, to stay with my family and I in Illinois, David had anything but a place to call home. In Indiana, he dealt with the line between stepping up and becoming the male leader of household, while witnessing his mother deteriorating from such an attacking disease. In Illinois, he was a part of what to him seemed to be a rather stable family, however, the fears and anxieties grew stronger being away from his Indiana roots and what was still there.

            David and I began sharing a bond that neither of us even acknowledged was forming. We stayed up all night when he came to visit, talking about everything and anything; excluding all of the negative realities that consumed his life back home. I seemed to serve as an escape from his issues, freeing his mind and allowing him to be a kid; something that he could not experience in Indiana. David and I understood one another in an unspeakable manner. Although we did not talk of the disasters in his life, he knew I was fully aware of what life had thrown his way, and that was enough to develop a trustful bond between the two of us. For this reason, I can only make the assumption that this is the reason David reached out and wrote to me while he was behind bars.

            “Things aren’t so bad in here.” David began his first letter to me with those words. I recall rereading this first sentence multiple times, trying to grasp an understanding as to how anyone could explain time spent in jail as not so bad. Cold showers, beds hard as rocks with sheets as stiff as cardboard, food that slopped onto the discolored lunch trays and unshaven criminals packed 45 to a block … these were now the realities of my cousin’s life and he describes it as being not so bad? For someone like me who has been fortunate to grow up in a dual parent home with parental and academic support, these were unimaginable conditions. His life, however, was compiled of a continuous downward spiral and it began to make sense that this occurrence offered stability, if one would call it that, for a least the next two years. Jail was just one more stop added to David’s long list of places that would never be called home.

“On the way home I got pulled over for speeding and the sheriff found a small pipe in my car with a little pot in it.”

            Speeding was a behavior that my family was quite familiar with but a small pipe with a little pot in it; what the hell was David thinking? My fourteen year old mind immediately began to judge him. Drugs were the things that made people on shows like Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones flip chairs over, they were the cause of the distorted brain cells and missing teeth photos that D.A.R.E scorched my mind. Now my cousin was a druggie? Describing his pipe as “small” and the amount of pot being “little,” it irritated me that David tried to downplay the significance of his actions. Drugs were drugs. Pot was pot. And jail was a place I never anticipated David to be.

***

This intimate back and forth writing between me and my convicted cousin was a way to express my own thoughts and concerns on the daily struggles of a teenager with someone who understood the severity of making wrong decisions and would live with the long-term consequences.

                                                               ***

“Tonight I got a taste of the night you were arrested. My parents caught me sneaking out.”

            Josh . . . That was his name, the love of my life for the first full two weeks of summer between my 8^th grade and freshman year of high school. It was a rainy Friday night and nothing was going to stop me from seeing him. The clock struck 1am and I took my first step towards my window. With the first screech of my window opening, I was lucky I had the sound of the rain to drown out any unplanned sounds that my escape might generate. As I made it out of my window, my feet slipped on every wet shingle. I only had to maneuver across ten panels of shingles and one broken gutter to reach the ladder, which I had strategically placed the morning of this big escape. Reaching the ladder, my hands raw to the bone from grasping the edges of the roof, my eyes locked on my father’s grinning face. Needless to say, I was not handcuffed by my dad and thrown into the back of police car; however, I knew what this meant. House arrest is what I was looking at for at least the next few weeks!

***

Not once did I feel David trying to “lecture” me or step into a third parent figure. Instead, a new element of our friendship emerged. Communicating our thoughts to one another, we grew from each other’s involvements, questions and mistakes. Through this writing experience, although I never once thought of this as a writing experience back then, I learned not only how to avoid making the same mistakes my cousin had, but also that the simple act of communicating through writing surfaced common interests that David and I were unaware even existed.

***

“I used the money I came in with to buy stamps, envelopes, paper, pens and hygiene items. To pass time I’ve been reading, something you always told me to do. I have two books down already!”

            Two books down already? This was not the David that I spent days upon days with during his visits. He always made fun of my “nerdish” hobbies. Instead of reading books, David forced me to participate in activities that were “cooler” such as skateboarding, tag, basketball and the worst of them all (fishing). These were the activities that David wanted me to join in on. Using the money he came in with, which I am positive was little to nothing, to buy items that allowed reading and writing expressed a different side of him that only jail could take credit for. Although no one in their right mind would wish to be thrown in the slammer, David was aware of his life spiraling downward, and recognized jail as his saving grace. Even though jail consisted of living amongst criminals, eating the same food day after day and being treated like animals, being jailed allowed for the liberty David needed to initiate a fresh start.

“I told you reading wasn’t that bad . . . you never listened to me”

            Being the older cousin, David always had to be right. He called the shots and he was the reason I felt the need to alter my own words and behaviors in hopes to be accepted. Realizing the impact that following others can have, David was a victim of this behavior. Without the conditions of his family life in Indiana and the social pressures he faced by his friends, I often contemplate whether David would have ever had his hands cuffed behind back, thrown into a cop car and placed into the Hamilton County Jail. What I find most interesting is the fact that although David never listened to me about silly things such as what games to play and what hobbies to take interest in, David did listen to others in life-altering situations such as his drug use. The power of listening to someone is the one take away that I got between mine and David’s interaction through these letters. Entering high school I thought I was steeping into a world of freedom. I was wrong. Instead David’s mistakes made me aware of the harmful effects that one decision can have. High school, in a sense, jailed me.

***

            Hearing my name called at my 8^th grade graduation ceremony was an experience that has come and gone. Walking across the graduation stage to receive my diploma, I knew my world was about to change. FREEDOM. Those seven letters spelled out the only thing that I was looking forward to. High school was just a few months away, why did it seem like an eternity? This new beginning was such an exhilarating event that consumed most of my thought process.

            As soon as that diploma reached my sweaty palms, I was free, careless, independent and above all…adventurous, or so I thought. These vivid feelings of freedom came to an abrupt stop after realizing that freedom is not always what one expects it to be. David, who was legally not free, was able to express his freedom in ways that were never exposed to him before his sentencing. I, on the other hand, being legally free had restrictions that I was blindsided by.