Prison is relentless. There is no single word better than “relentless” to better describe what being incarcerated is like. Oppressively constant. Always there, like a threat, with me every second of every day.

Before I started my bid, I’d asked guys who’d done time what being locked up was really like. I never found their answers satisfactory. Most responses consisted of some version of, “You’ll be fine; it’s not what movies make it out to be.” Taking my experience thus far at face value, I can’t say they were lying. Yes, I’m fine. I’m fine if being fine means not beat up, raped, extorted, forced to join a gang for survival, or other physical violations that might deviate away from that vague, arbitrary condition of being fine. My body is fine, sure but the parts that you can’t see? Like I said, prison is relentless. A relentless assault on my state of mind, my emotions, maybe even my soul.

In the outside world, mental health is a hot topic, and it should be. We have athletes, celebrities, and other seemingly successful people all opening up about their struggles with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. In here, the conversation about mental health is a different story. Being in prison is like living in the past. I live in what America was 50 years ago. Racism is alive and rampant, homophobia is the accepted norm, and mental health just means you’re a pussy. I’m not sure why so many people want to romanticize America’s past as some great bastion of ethics and morality, but I can assure you that reviving these prevailing thought processes does not make American great. I can’t talk about my feelings, emotions, or state of mind with the men here. We all have it bad, we’re all going through the hardest times of our lives, we all feel left behind, we all miss our families, we all have loves who’ve moved on. We should probably all be seeing psychologists, but instead we hold it in. We laugh, we read books, we play cards, and we avoid. We avoid the reality of our situations by complaining about the cake being too dry for breakfast, the room being too cold, the jackass guard tapping on the window and waking us up just to be a dick. We talk about the girls we’ve slept with, the drugs we’ve done and sold, the money we used to have. It’s all so meaningless and mundane. I feel myself turning off the conversations. I’ll realize I have no idea if I ever even responded or spoke. The worst part is that now I take this with me on the phone with family and friends I love. I’ve become a robot, and I can’t find the switch to come back to life.

I was on the phone with my daughter. She was playing in her stepsister’s room, paying no attention to me being on the phone. I should have cared, should have made her talk to me, but I couldn’t. I just wanted to listen to her play, listen to her interact with another human being where their biggest concern in the world was stuffed animals on a bed. I wanted to take myself there, to be standing at the door watching them both play. Instead, I’m standing in Oklahoma on a phone reminding me that I’m just an inmate at a federal prison with ten minutes to cover years of missing everything about my daughter’s life. I’m not writing this for sympathy; I know with COVID that everyone out there has it bad, too. I’m writing this because it’s the only way I can stay sane, the only way I can find out who I really am, the only outlet I have for this numbness that washes over me in waves. It’s almost comforting, the lack of feeling. Because the other option…

I’ve changed a lot over the years. As a child, I look back and see that I was emotional. I wore anger, disdain, excitement, joy, and hurt on my sleeve. Sometimes, or maybe most of the times, when I play sports, my emotions really come out. The rest of the time I tend to stay pretty even. My sister hates it; she doesn’t think I show enough emotion. I think I’ve just learned to keep them under control. I’ve cried since I’ve been in prison, sure. Once when my daughter sent me a picture where she asked how long I was going to be in jail, once when I found out my father was in a serious car accident, another time when my daughter sent me a letter when I was in solitary, and again what I found out one of the best people I’ve ever known had passed away. I don’t know why I’m confessing this. I guess just to prove to myself that I can still feel things sometimes. To prove that I’m not actually dead. I’m not dead, right? I’m still here. It’s hard to tell.

I know that people love me. I’m so lucky compared to most of the men here. No, not just lucky, but blessed. Blessed to have some really amazing people in my corner. I do like to think that the reason I’m so blessed is a reflection of the person I was before I came to prison. Still, when there is no way to physically touch or even visually communicate with anyone I care about, it’s hard not to feel alone, even if I know I’m not. I have someone snoring two feet underneath me, and over 100 other men just outside my room, but I still feel alone. So utterly and helplessly alone.

It’s almost scary how easily we adapt to our surroundings as humans. I remember counting my 15th day in solitary, thinking I only had to make it to 30. Now I’ve been locked behind a door for 315 days and counting. I know most people reading this don’t really understand prison, but what I’m experiencing is not normal prison. Under normal conditions (non-COVID), death row inmates get out of their cells an hour every day. I am now grateful because I’m finally in a place that lets me out of my cell for 45 minutes every day. For nearly a year, I’ve been treated worse than a death row inmate because I sold weed and used a cellphone. This is just my reality, and the scary part is that I don’t cry. I don’t beat on the door and say I’m sorry. I don’t really feel much of anything about it. I’ve simply adapted and accepted that this is my life now. At day 15, if someone had told me that I’d still be locked in a cell 300 days later, I’d have sworn that I wouldn’t make it. But here I am. Not dead yet. It’s just this numbness…

I don’t even remember what freedom feels like. I really don’t. I don’t really remember what a hug feels like, what sex feels like, what ordering a meal feels like. I don’t remember what it feels like to drive a car, to have to work tomorrow, to have plans for the weekend. I think that has been the saddest realization. I have become institutionalized, and I never even felt it happening. This is just who I am now. I am inmate 32201-1271. I am no longer a real person. I’m a statistic, another drug dealer behind bars. This is what I mean about prison being relentless: it never stops. I never get a break. There is no vacation. These feelings, emotions, and thoughts alongside the forced metamorphosis of my very being is horribly and uncontrollably relentless. Always there, like a threat, with me every second of every day.

And yet.

I won’t give up.