Prisoners of Love By T. Cyan Chapter 1

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Are You Like Me? If you're like me you have seen one or two undercover investigations on television this week. The story detailed the get tough policy on crime or the way that 1.2 million men and women are incarcerated in U.S. prisons. Maybe the talking head exposed to the chagrin of a nation of television viewers how prisoners have it easy. If you are like me maybe you have, in passing, heard people talking at the next table. They were saying that all criminals deserve what they get or that they don't get enough of the bad they deserve and if you're like me, just for a moment you feel your body tense and try to justify what you know with what you have just heard. A silent scream of anguish choked off at the throat yells, "What about me? What about my family? I'm serving time too and I have done nothing!" You suppressed the words because you know the reply already, "He/She should have thought about that before committing the crime." You lower your head for a moment, "Yes, they should have..." That didn't happen and you raise your head and continue on. If you are like me then sometimes you and your family are watching your favorite T.V. show only to hear a character spouting pop psychology with an air of knowing, "Spouses of prisoners are ill, and seeking some sort of subconscious Band-Aid from an impossible love." You swallow just for a moment and hope you don't have to confront questions from your children, children who don't understand why their family is singled out as defective. If you are like me, no matter how many times this happens...it can't matter, guilt or innocence or the gravity of the crime can't matter because a member of your family is incarcerated. Someone you love is not at home tonight, and someone you care about is in danger 24 hours a day, held behind bars and glass and barbed wire. Someone you love is watched by men and women in uniforms and badges. They are people sworn to uphold the law and if you are lucky and you pray that you are, those men and women take their oath seriously. Because you know from what your loved ones tell you and the people you have encountered on visiting day that many aren't there to uphold the law. They are there because it is there that they can wield absolute power. They thrive on having power over another human being and therefore they are no better than the criminals they are there to guard. If you are like me on those visits to see your loved one, you hold your head up high, against the eyes of the judgment of uniformed people, some of whom think they know you. They don't care if you are a good citizen, if you attend church, if you are a mother, son, or a friend or a criminal in your own right. To some, in a glance you can tell that to them you are "trash visiting trash." You come up with ways to boost yourself in their presence so that you don't look like you feel when you see your friend or relative. "I am a worthy human being!" You think. Oh it may take different forms, "I make more money than you, I am closer to God, I am more loved, I am more educated or a thousand other things, anything to keep that uniform with power over your family from eating away at your pride. As you go though the process to visit you hand over your identity and walk though the gates and make the walk to the room where you will see someone you deeply love in chains. You might hear your husband, son, wife, daughter, mother or father even your friend called, by a number, a last name, or worse, "inmate" or "Offender." You wait and try not to imagine what the other people around you go through away from here. Some are frightening in appearance and look more like television convicts than visitors and that may disturb you. At the same time you may be feeling pride that you are sitting in a room with these people. You sit next to a wife who has remained faithful to her husband for all the years he has been incarcerated. A father, closer to the grave than he is to his youth, who has visited his son regularly for 24 years. A handful of children smile at their parents through glass. Teenagers talk on telephones to parents. They have grown up loving while never being able to feel his or her touch. You look around and see happy faces in the visiting area, you hear laughter and see warm embraces. Embraces that in some cases have to last a life time. If you are like me, at the moment you see your loved one, all the exposés and rude remarks fade and are replaced instead by a sense of peace as you see a familiar form walk toward you and greet you with a look you know too well. This time your loved one looks healthy and you breath a sigh of relief. A few minutes earlier another inmate came out with a blackened eye and greeted family with a smile that defied the evidence of a broken face and you swallowed hard hoping that you never have to shore up the tears like that woman and smile while all the while her heart is breaking. If you are like me you are proud to stand next to that woman and hope that if your loved one ever greets you like that you will handle it with that kind of grace. If you are like me you know that no man or woman with family or friends serves their time alone. You too are serving a sentence, a sentence on the outside, and if you are strong you serve your time easy, but when you are weak you serve your time hard. It is better to be strong. Even the strongest have moments of weakness and crumble under the pressure. The pain of separation is hardest on the children who are running around the visiting room. A child always serves their time hard. I have seen the parent on the outside try to separate their children from the reality of their jailed parent's incarceration but it is seldom successful. Even a loathed parent is sometimes missed. Sometimes missing that parent they seek to become them, just to be close to them in their mind even for a moment and the most evident trait is that their parent broke the law, maybe only once and that may be what they emulate. Sometimes it is better that they face the mistake of the elder and learn to make other decisions based on council from behind a glass panel. Who is to say? If you are like me, you know someone who's only good times with a loved one happen when the loved one is incarcerated. I have listened to my friend tell me of her hopes and dreams when her husband is incarcerated. He too writes me and tells me a fairy-tale that I only wish were true. Both he and his wife under-estimate the power of his addiction to drugs and alcohol. They forget it's lure when life throws you curves as life often does. The heaven they share during times of incarceration soon turns into a living hell when he is released. The devotion that is appreciated when he is in, the love they share, is eclipsed by the need for drugs and that need turns him to crime and with it paranoia and secrets and a chasm opens between them until he is picked up again. He gets incarcerated again, and gets cleaner (I say cleaner instead of clean because anything you can get on the street is plentiful in lock-ups.) He becomes a loving caring husband and father once again and hopes and dreams are built anew and we hope that this time they will come true. They sometimes do. Prison sentences are however becoming longer and mandatory minimums keep some inmates in past the point when addiction looses it's grip and long past the point where a prisoner has a family to come home to and dreams to build on. If you are like me you feel there has got to be a better way. A man at a vending machine greets me smiling and his smile fades. "You go first" he says, "I can't make up my mind what to get..." He pauses then continues as you deposit your money in the machine and hear it clink. "It just occurred to me as I was looking at my 19 year old son that I will be dead long before he is released, ...and so will his mother. Who will be out there for him in 45 years?" Catching himself, he regains his happy demeanor and says, "That looks good. I think I'll have one of what you're having." and slips his coins into the machine with shaking hands and smiles as I walk away. His hands are stained with dirt from years of hard work. Under normal circumstances you may not have noticed him. His hair is fading, his face creased from sun. He isn't like you, he isn't like anyone you know well, or maybe he is just like you and you just noticed. This pain you share and this pain you hold dear is your only bond. This pain only others in this room understand. Only here for this limited time, you are not unique. ....." From Prisoners of Love; a guide for anyone wanting to maintain, stengten and cultivate relationships with lovedones during times of incarceration.