Here I sit. Room 316, bunk 1 lower, unit 5852 of Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution. Another New Year’s Eve behind bars.

I’m not watching the ball drop. Not because I don’t want to—I do—but because the MP3 player I use to listen to the T.V. died, and I have to charge it overnight. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. They turn the T.V.s off at 11:45 so we can be in our rooms while they count us like livestock at some point between midnight and one. Just another day serving the time assigned to inmate 32201-171.

I’ve spent all day thinking about what to say that sums up 2021. What to write about a year that began in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and ended with a pen in my hand, alone in a room full of men, alone with my thoughts. What to write about the future, about what’s in store for 2022.

As I watched movies, football, and Miley Cyrus throw a party I wished I was attending, I tried to push away the emotions of another year wasted behind the razor wire fence. A year of my life I’ll never get back. A year spent without a breath of freedom, a hug from my daughter, or the touch of a beautiful woman. I guess I should be used to this; 2020 was exactly the same.

When I self-surrendered in 2019, I knew I’d be incarcerated for all of 2021. I could’ve never guessed anything else prison had waiting for me. Looking back, I don’t know what I expected, but what I’m doing right now certainly was not it. Starting a blog? Writing a novel? Using the written word to express my deepest self? That isn’t the man I was before prison. That isn’t the man I thought I’d ever become.

I began this year surrounded by roaches in a cell that flooded every night. I was shackled from my hands to my ankles and put on a plane twice. I witnessed the biggest snowstorm in Oklahoma history through the fifth-floor window of a cell. I arrived in New Jersey wearing a T-shirt and chains in the dead of winter with ice on the ground and flakes coming down. I caught COVID-19 and was so sick I couldn’t even speak. I had to learn how to be around people again since I’d been locked away for so long. I moved from one building to another, to another to the SHU, and then back again. Now I’ve moved to RDAP to try and get out of prison before I have to spend another New Year’s Eve writing about this. Each time I moved, I left people behind. Real people, friends, men I created bonds with who I’ll never see again. Human beings serving amounts of time I can’t comprehend. I hate this system, I hate this place, and I hate the people who make it this way. I have too much of a heart to live like this. I’m simply too alive.

As much as I hate all of this, I’ve learned from it as well. I’ve learned lessons about listening, perspective, and what it takes to be a man. I’ve grown as a person in every aspect of who I am. I’ve found a way to stay connected with the people who love me most on the outside. I’ve become a better father. I’ve become a better friend.

I close the 2021 chapter of my life looking only toward the future. By the end of 2022, I’ll be a published author, a present father, and most importantly, free.