Ms. C let me know late in the week that one of our released
graduates (seven have left; four more go in April; four more in May) was back
in custody. “John” went AWOL from
Goodwill his second day out. Within a
week he was picked up by police passed out on the side of the road. He was high
on crack. He’d spent less than a week
out of here before he fell back into his drug addiction.
When I met John as a student in our program he was almost
five years into his fourth trip to prison; thirty-eight years old and four
bids. He’d spent a total of eighteen
years locked up, all in three to five year trips. And it all was because of drugs. Well, drugs were what he turned to help him
deal with the pain of a failed, fractured life.
Four times during his year in school John quit. “I can’t do this shit”, he’d announce. Four times I cajoled him, berated him,
uplifted him to keep going. “You can do
this”, I’d tell him. “Show these
bastards you can do this.” And he made
it. At graduation he had no one
there. His family had moved on long
before. He asked to take a picture with
me. In it, he’s grinning. He told me graduating was his first real
accomplishment in life.
Two weeks ago I saw him leaving breakfast. He was headed for the front gate. He called out to me. “I’m getting out.” But, he didn’t look happy. No, he looked scared, very scared. I walked over to him and quietly said, “You
can do this, John. Be strong. You can do this.”
But, he couldn’t. And
every night I’ve prayed for him just like I do about dozens of other guys in
here and people on the outside who have walked away from me. Drugs, I’ve learned, are terrible, terrible
things. And so is self-loathing. I turned to my modern language Bible, to the
Beatitudes. It began simply “you’re
blessed when you’re at the end of your rope….”
I couldn’t help but think of John.
That evening, a young student named “Fifty” came back from
English early. I cornered him as soon as
he came in. “I’m quitting Larry”, he
told me. “I can’t do it. I got too much on me.” He then proceeded to tell me that he’d been
called to medical that afternoon. He’d
tested positive for TB (the entire compound is tested annually). When he explained he’d had false positives
before, he was told “go on meds for nine months or go to isolation”.
“Fifty, you can’t quit.
Do you know what happens to young, black men who go to prison? This is your life, Fifty. College is all that will keep you out of
here.” I was in his face and I was
pleading with him. He put his head
down. “I’m not gonna quit, Larry. I know I need this.”
DC and Jay heard my conversation. They both have told me in the past I wear my
emotions on my sleeve for these guys. DC
even told me he felt for me being in here. “Guys like you Larry. You do things out of love, fear,
whatever. You do them and you know their
wrong ad you think you deserve what you get.
You don’t deserve this.” I hate
this place and I hate what it does to so many of these guys. It’s a vicious cycle and you have to be
strong to break out. John couldn’t.
We had a failure.
Statistically, it’s going to happen.
The men in this program all register high for recidivism. Many have baggage – drug and alcohol abuse,
screwed up family situations, they lack education and job skills. They’ve been told they don’t matter. They’re expected to fail.
And in the middle of it is me. I feel lousy, but they don’t know it. They see me joking around, laughing, and they
think “he’s got it all together”. They
don’t know how I ask God every night to tell me what it means. They don’t see the failure I see in myself.
So, I pray about John and all the other struggling souls in
here. And I check on Fifty and make sure
he’s alright. And, I remember that no
man is a total failure. Dr. King said, “Every
man is somebody because he is a child of God”.
What does it all mean? I wish I knew.
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