I’m annoying. I already know it. Being fucking positive with all that “believing in myself” bullshit. I hate that shit. Well, at least I know I used to.

I had about two months between sentencing and the time I had to self-surrender. I felt almost nothing during those two months, yet, somehow, I simultaneously also felt nearly everything—I managed to feel completely numb while also experiencing an emotional rollercoaster that had gone off the rails. I destroyed nearly every relationship I was a part of and literally did not give a fuck. I felt like that time was completely for me, to do whatever the fuck I wanted. And boy, did I ever. 

Two days before I self-surrendered, my ex flew in from Hawaii to see me. Not a recent ex, no—she was my ex from growing up, my first love. As a kid, she was the girl I always saw myself ending up with. She hit me up on Instagram when I posted about going to prison. I honestly hadn’t known she even followed me. 

Margaret is amazing. She honestly is, but holy fuck, she is so damn positive. While everyone else was in tears saying goodbye to me as if I was dying, Margaret was smiling and telling me I would be fine, that I would be better for the experience. I nodded my head in agreement. What else could I do? What choice did I really have? I had to be fine. I hated it. I found it annoying. I found comfort in the tears of people who have never talked to me since. I was dying. Maybe I wanted to be dead. No, that’s too serious, and I have been to that place before. I didn’t want to die, but living didn’t sound great, either. Five years in prison for something everyone is doing? Man. That just didn’t seem fair. I craved the empathy of all the others. I didn’t want to hear all Margaret’s bullshit “you will be fine”s.  

She couldn’t stop smiling every time she looked at me. We really had been in love like that when we were kids. I was different now, though. I was a hardened criminal who sold drugs and was going to prison. Right? I didn’t feel like that, either. I was a player, a man who could have a different girl every night. I didn’t still love the same way she did anymore. I don’t even believe in forever love. Right? I was in love with someone else, my ex from New York, the one I said goodbye to a week before. She’d treated me the way I wanted to be treated. She stayed sad the whole time I was there, cried after our last time having sex. When I kissed her goodbye, we both knew it was forever. There was no after-prison life. 

Margaret changed her return flight so she could be there when I self-surrendered to prison. I freaked out. I didn’t want that. I wanted to call Juli in New York one last time before I walked in, see her shed more tears for the guy she would soon ignore. I left Margaret at a coffee spot in my town and never even said goodbye.

I didn’t want her positivity. I didn’t want her hope for my future. I didn’t want to say goodbye to my past. I wanted those moments before prison to last forever. I had no thoughts on what was to come; I wanted sex, drugs, and everyone around me to feel bad for me. I wanted to feel like I was dying. Looking back, I think I did.

Positivity is annoying. People who believe in themselves are annoying. People who constantly expect better from me are terrible. It’s even worse when it’s someone who actually lives it, someone I can’t find anything bad to say about. Someone who is just genuine and happy. Fuck. Someone give me a bag so I can throw up. 

Then I got to prison. I met friends that would save my life. The first person was “G,” a Venezuelan kid from Miami. He is the most positive person I have ever met. From Margaret to G in less than a week. Someone just let me throw a pillow over my head and cry already, please. Let me sulk in my pity party and leave me the fuck alone. But what the fuck else was I going to do? 

G gave me structure. G gave me hope. G made me realize that pressing a button to fast forward to the end of my sentence wouldn’t be worth it, that we had a real chance to improve who we are as people through the prison experience, that prison could be a place that could make us, not break us. He lived it every single day. He was the best athlete and the best musician on the compound. One day I know for a fact G will be famous; there is no one else in the world like him, and he will not be stopped until he succeeds. If that sounds familiar, yes, I got it from him. I have never been much of a follower, but G? I will follow him wherever he leads. Then G got a cellphone shot for a video left on a phone that was taken by the officers. The video had me in it as well, but somehow they didn’t recognize me and thought I was someone else. G was gone, and so was Eli, our third amigo and another follower of the positivity and hope that G possessed. 

Now I was alone in prison. It was all up to me to fend for myself. I didn’t have a leader to follow around everyday. I had to find something else to fill my time. What I found, through a wild set of circumstances, was my ability to write. I went to the Special Housing Unit, the worst punishment the Bureau of Prisons has. My thirty-day sentence turned into eight months. What the fuck was I going to do, now?

At first, I just laid there, reading books and watching my cellmate, Mitch, write letter after letter to his mom. He had gone viral on TikTok and was getting out soon. PrisonBirkin was one of the most interesting people I have ever met. I learned a lot from him, but still, I just was laying there doing time. I had received a letter from Candice, the most amazing editor in the world. She will most likely forever regret her decision to write me. She told me that I should keep writing and that she would post anything I sent her. She even offered to edit and do everything I needed to get a book out if I wrote one. Ha, yeah right. What the fuck was I going to write about? The bran flakes for breakfast and the two bologna sandwiches a day? My life was boring as fuck, and I hadn’t seen daylight in seventy-five days. Then they moved Mitch to a different range. He was supposed to leave as soon as the lockdown expired. Hope was back for everyone on the range.

Then they extended the COVID lockdown for another thirty days knowing damn well it wouldn’t be over. Fuck it. Might as well start writing again. I had a new cellie, now: Sarge, a crazy old white man who had been fucked up by military service. He needed help. Mental help. Very badly. I tried everything to stand up for him. I tried everything to stand up for us. I started writing everyone, using my pen and paper as the only weapon I had. I sent countless letters to my sister, had her send them to every senator, congressman, news organization, and whoever else I thought might listen. We were being treated beyond inhumanely. I fought and I fought. Then I just stopped. 

I realized it wasn’t worth it. These people weren’t going to do the right thing; all they cared about was following protocol so they could avoid lawsuits. The officers only cared about getting hazard pay. Just like anything else in the world, it was all about money. The kind of money I don’t have. Simply put, I was hopeless. Not because I had none, but because there was none. There was nothing to hope for. I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. There was no end date to my suffering. The 30 days of disciplinary sanction had ended in May. It was August. Man, give me a break.

Really, that was it. That was the moment my life changed. That was the moment I realized the only way to beat my oppressors was to succeed. The only way to beat the system was to overcome it. The only way to stay positive was to be positive. The only hope I found was in myself, the hope that I could become who I knew I was always meant to be. 

Now I am the annoying one. I believe in myself because I was left with nothing else to believe in. I stay positive because I can’t bear to fight my way back from the pit of despair that knowing only failure brings. I wish I could transmit this belief and positivity to others, but I know that isn’t possible. All I can do is tell my story and hope that it makes a difference to someone.