Trials & Tribulations: Part I- My Story

Trials & Tribulations: Part I- My Story, By: Bradley P

 

            Some days I wonder why it’s impossible to change the past, yet it’s so easy to relive it. September 9^th, 2012 was one of those days.

It wasn’t the feeling of once again having handcuffs locked around my wrists, and it wasn’t when I was read my rights. It wasn’t when I was driven in the back of a cop car to the precinct, nor was it when the police took my fingerprints. It wasn’t during my humiliating strip- search, and it wasn’t when I was brought, cuffed and shackled, to the courthouse. It wasn’t when I was locked inside the large holding cell with a bunch of other men that had been arrested, and it wasn’t when I went in front of the judge to be arraigned. It wasn’t when the judge gave me a bail I had no way of paying, nor was it when I finally had the opportunity to make a phone call. It wasn’t when my heart-broken parents answered the phone, having already learned of my situation because it was in the newspaper. No, it was none of those things. It was over twenty- four hours after my arrest, when the cell gate slammed shut behind me with that loud, reverberating Clank! that shot through my body as though it was an electric current. It was that incomparable sound, that feeling that seemed to resonate deep within my soul that was an exclamation point added to what I knew I would soon be forced to face. It was with that sound that the reality of my situation finally set in.

I looked around my cell, a sense of déjà vu overwhelming me, as I ran through everything that I knew would happen in the days to come. I looked at the filthy toilet/sink combination, and then up and around the graffiti-tagged walls. I gazed at the steel bed bolted to the wall, and I remember thinking that it oddly resembled a morgue slab. My eyes shifted down to the dirty floor, and that was that. “Home, sweet home,” I had mumbled to myself.

I think jail and prison is harder the second time around. Once you’ve been through it, you know what to expect. That knowledge brings no comfort.

I thought of the unbearable drug withdrawals I was soon to face, and I thought of the move to a regular cell block after the medical department deemed me fit for General Population. I wondered where I would go, and which inmate would be the first one to “try” me. This was not a question of if, but a question of when and how many. My only concern was that I was not too deep into my withdrawals to defend myself, but I pushed that thought out of my mind when I decided that I simply didn’t care. I felt that whatever happened, I deserved. My mind moved to thoughts of my next court date, and I wondered how many more days, how many more years, I would have to spend my days and nights in a cell like this one. But mostly I wondered if my parents would be there, or if they would come to visit me at all. I thought of my sister. I saw their faces in my mind.

Though every cell was occupied, and the noise level was constant, never in my life had I felt so alone. I’ve always been an introvert, never having minded isolation, but on that day the loneliness was suffocating, as though a snake had coiled around my lungs, my heart, my soul, squeezing, feeding off my misery. I remember the feeling clearly, can see myself curled into a fetal position on the cold, hard bed. And for the first time in years, I cried.

I craved opiates, though at this point it was not yet for my withdrawals, but for the numbness they would bring. I wanted to feel nothing, and as I wallowed in my sorrow, punishing myself with self- pity, I began to think of death. I welcomed the thoughts, embraced them. I thought of all the pain I had caused to the people that love me, and I convinced myself that it would be better for us all if I was gone.

These thoughts grew and festered inside me for three months, and it was during this period that I picked fights with my family in an attempt to push them further away. I had made the decision to die in my cell, I just didn’t know how. But I was determined to find a way. And I did.

I believe that everything happens for a reason. It was the beginning of November 2012, when I had made arrangements to have a large amount of drugs brought into the jail. I paid an inmate using the three hundred dollars I had in my commissary account, and he set it up that I would receive a large quantity of narcotics after he returned from a visit. I planned to take them all at once, and I thought it befitting to use the drugs that ruined my life, to end it.

As I sit here, I realize that my life was often nothing more than my navigation across a series of thin lines. At times this journey became an intricate dance, a balancing act upon the razor’s edge of right or wrong; of success or failure; of truth or lies or good or evil; and, sometimes, of life or death.

I’ve seen how life can change in an instant, for better or worse, based off of a single decision. I’ve learned the hard way that every action has a consequence, whether that consequence is immediate or occurs several years later. Every day, we all make decisions and choices. I’ve realized that each decision causes a ripple effect that can last a lifetime, and all future choices are often the direct result of the one prior, ad infinitum. Once a decision is made and carried out, the ripple begins. At that point, there is no going back. Over time, the ripples grow in size and strength, the decisions become more difficult, the choices more distorted, more abstract. And the result of one poor decision can be disastrous, as though that tiny ripple in the water has grown into a catastrophic tsunami. However, the law of unintended consequences can sometimes be beneficial, though it may take some time to see it.

Eventually, my drug addled brain had caused the words “right” and “wrong” to become just that: words. The proverbial line of what was right and what was wrong had blurred to the point that they become indistinguishable. I lived on the other side. In my life I’ve made so many poor decisions there would not be enough paper and ink in the world to print them. But I’ve had a lot of time to think. Prison’s like that, with plenty of downtime, with an overabundance of self-analysis and introspection. It is time I used to punish myself by dwelling on my many failures, asking myself a myriad of answerless questions and questions better left unanswered.

It’s easy to see things in hindsight, because life can only be understood backwards. But life is lived forwards. I think that I had always been so terrified of what the future held that I refused to let go of my past. So on the days I find myself wondering why it’s impossible to change the past, yet it’s so easy to relive it, I remind myself that to forgive is not to forget, but to remember and let it go. Perhaps writing and sharing my story, even if nobody reads it, will help me leave the past in my rearview; perhaps it will help me let it go.

In a way, I did die in my cell that cold November day. I was broken, tired of life and the way I lived it, but, like a mechanic, sometimes you have to see and assess the damage done in order to fix it. And sometimes you just have to break something to be able to build it back up.

As it turned out, I did receive the drugs that day. I was supposed to get them once we returned to the cell block, but I had been surprised by a visit of my own, and the inmate insisted on giving them to me in the visiting room so he didn’t have to sneak them out himself. Minutes later, I was caught with them.

It was from that day forward that I began to repair the cracks and fissures in an attempt to make myself whole, perhaps for the first time. I will forever be a work-in-progress, using my past as glue to put the pieces of my life where I see fit. It was that incident that changed my view of myself. In a way, every time I look in the mirror I see a stranger staring back at me, though with each passing day I learn more and more interesting things about the man I see.

Still, one question lingers in the back of my mind. Why? I want to know why I’ve done what I’ve done, why I am the way that I am. What was the catalyst, that first wrong decision that led me astray? Perhaps reliving certain events of my life on paper will help me to finally answer that question.