NOTES FROM THE PEN

Bobby Caldwell-Kim: Notes From The Pen

First things first…

You can find our podcast, Notes from the Pen, on all platforms, shooting off at the mouth about prison, life, and all our unsolicited opinions. Come listen to a crew of childhood friends, fellow inmates, and recently-freed friends become pebbles in the shoe of the prison industrial complex.

You can start from Episode 1, and watch the boys get their feet wet in the podcasting world, or skip through their stories in any order. Not sure where to start? The NFTP crew recommends episodes 6, 9, and 52 as a good starting point. Apple podcast link:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/notes-from-the-pen/id1518819034

Don’t use Apple? Search for us on your favorite podcast platform.

On Twitter? So is @notesfromthepen, where Mama C shares Bobby’s thoughts, jokes, and roasts from a cell in Michigan.

We can also be found on Instagram, @notesfromthepen, where you can find snippets, writing excerpts, and more unsolicited vanity from the Michigan Department of Correction’s most extroverted inmate. 

Meet Bobby (also known as Chino, depending on who’s asking)

I've been in prison going on ten years now. I started getting serious about writing when I got locked up. At first it was just about expression. An attempt to hold onto a little bit of freedom in a place otherwise designed to kill such things. A few years in I started writing about the things I was watching unfold. I figured, somebody should do it.

Over the years I've written pieces about corrupt officers, nonsensical policies, the cruelty of solitary confinement, censorship, corruption, and dangerous parole processes. I've written about the slave wages and the financial fleecing of inmates and their families; about the benefits of good time and Michigan's failure to offer positive reinforcement to inmates. I've written about everything I've seen along the way, the ridiculous, hilarious, and serious alike. My goal was to give a fuller voice to the prison experience, something deeper than stereotypes, and to share my story with others who may be suffering with depression and addiction.

WAYS TO HELP

1) Contact your Michigan Legislator & ask them to support prison reform - Earned Credit Bill (good time).

We love creating content for the NFTP community, but our funds are limited, so we’ve created a way to lesson this financial weight.

NOTES FROM THE PEN PATREON

2) Join Notes From The Pen podcasts on Patreon (red button above)

Your gifts/donations help with maintaining this website, help offset the expensive prison phone calls, aid with Bobby's eye glasses, and allows us to send him bits of food and coffee.

(gifts/donations are not tax deductible)

A Thank-you From Mama C

I’d like to thank everyone that has donated. It is your generosity that has enabled us to carry on.

When we started this project, this human experience behind bars, we knew how important it was to give a voice to those locked up. Over the years we’ve grown from simple social media platforms, to this website, and now there’s a podcast. Our voices, both family members and the incarcerated, are being heard. All along the way we’ve had several people reach out asking how they can help, how they can donate, and we are truly grateful for that support.

These social media platforms allow us to share our experiences, and it’s making a difference. We’re creating the emotional connection needed for prison reform, and for that we are truly grateful.

Thank-you for being a part of our journey. We love you guys!

And the issue at hand: mass incarceration

A note from Mama C, the woman behind the curtain, who has been fighting Michigan’s archaic sentencing for years

We share our thoughts and solutions on why we fail with mass incarceration. You get to hear it all. The sad, ugly, enlightening, truthful, funny, real time…ok ok ok. You get the idea by now. It’s told in real time from my son who’s living it all as I type this, and who will continue to be in prison when I update this site next year. And if you’ve stuck around this long, then you too will: learn, laugh, cry, and rethink what it’s like to be in prison, and how much it effects families & loved ones. We keep it real by sharing what life is really like behind bars; not what you see on the big screen, or TV. You’ll see and hear gut wrenching sadness, loneliness, pain, sorrow, and even some lightheartedness. We’ve learned that if you don’t smile or laugh you end up crying all the time, so we try to inject humor when we can.

I started this website for my son in order to give him hope, and to share his thoughts, ideas, and writings with the outside world. He shares his life with us, “warts and all”, with the hope that others might learn, and not make the same mistake he’s made. His writings are all original and meant to give him an outlet, and perhaps for others to gain some insight. 

My son is currently incarcerated in the state of Michigan, a place where there is no hope if you’re locked up. I had no idea how bad our nation’s prison systems really are until my son ended up there. If you have a loved one locked up behind bars then you know what this is like, and if not, consider yourself lucky.

America uses prison to treat people with drug addiction, mental illness, homelessness, poverty, and depression. The big problem with that approach is there’s no treatment! Inmates are often released worse off than when they went in. That’s bad for everyone when that happens. 

So this website is not only to give my son hope during his time behind bars, but to use it as a platform for change. Our goal is to seek changes one tweet, one letter, and one phone call at a time. 

“Not only is the U.S. among the leading countries worldwide in incarcerations per 100 thousand of population, but as of 2021, the United States had the highest number of incarcerated individuals worldwide, with more than 2 million people in prison. The U.S. was followed by China, Brazil, the Russian Federation, and India. “ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2021.html

 Why I’m in prison: Charge Of Involuntary Manslaughter

Rather than only going over the technical details that are involved in the crime, which is covered in depth in the PSI (Pre Sentence Investigation), I wanted to focus on what isn't covered in the PSI, which is what was going on internally when all this happened—what I was feeling and thinking as the events unfolded. What has never been written down.

On the night of November 19th, 2013, in a selfish and reckless attempt to take my own life, with my fiancé and children in the same house, I inadvertently killed Monica, the mother of our children, the best person I knew, and the love of my life.

At a time in my life when I thought that I had conquered the most difficult of my struggles, when I thought that I finally had it all under control; the lifelong depression, the severe opioid addiction, the reckless rebellion of my youth tamed, I became complacent. And in this complacency I made myself vulnerable to the things I thought that I had patched over.

Around the age of twelve I started to display signs of, and was soon medicated for, severe depression. The doctors gave several factors that played a possible role in my depression. Things like: I never knew my father, who left when he found out my mom was pregnant with me, I was sexually victimized when I was five years old, depression ran in our family, I was told that it was a chemical imbalance of serotonin, but the truth is these were all just guesses. 

Depression is hard enough to properly define let alone to isolate its cause. In all honesty, it was probably a combination of all of these things and more. I just thought too hard, about things too deep, too depressing, for a kid my age. For as long as I can remember I felt an incompleteness and an existential despair. It led me to a hopeless outlook and a struggle to find meaning in those formative years. 

By now I had a stepdad that was a great provider and that I am forever grateful for, but neither him or my mom could give me the answers I was looking for.

Eventually, after many failed attempts at medicating my depression, I turned to self-medication. First with alcohol and marijuana, and then prescription painkillers. Opioids weren't the perfect answer that I was looking for, but they made me forget the question altogether.

I spent years struggling with both depression and addiction. What turned out to be two interconnected aspects of the same problem. Treatment facilities and bouts of depression.

When I finally found myself at the only remaining bridge in my life, I moved in with my sister in Traverse City. I was there to get off the opioid addiction medicine that I had been prescribed, and ironically addicted to. And once I was completely sober I would get a job and start a fresh, a new beginning. This is exactly what I did. For the first time in my adult life I was off of all opioids, clear-headed, and motivated.

In the year leading up to the night of Monica's death I had been doing good, well, relatively speaking. I had been working as the lead cook at the Seasons buffet at a local casino. A few years earlier I had met the love of my life: Monica; a woman who understood me completely and loved me unconditionally. She had a beautiful daughter, just like her, who now called me dad. And we had a son: Cassius, my first and only son, the best part of me. We had a family and the love was deep and sincere. (I wish I could do more to tell you about her but every time I try, my words can never do justice to the woman she was. She was my everything. We were each others rocks, she was my biggest fan and I adored her. She was the most genuinely warm, funny and loving person I'd ever known. We were truly in love.)

On that night in November it all came to an unexpected and unbelievably tragic end.

Shortly after losing my job at the casino, I found new employment. I lost my health insurance coverage from the casino, and while I waited for the three months to pass at my new job to become eligible for their coverage, I could no longer afford to see a doctor. And so I did what I had always done in the past, which was the worst thing to do: I started to self-medicate again. I started drinking and taking pills.

In my worst moments, I became suicidal. It wasn't the first time but it was by far the most overwhelming and intense of these feelings. In the beginning, I was able to keep this hidden, I was used to this practice of keeping it all inside. But as the frequency and intensity of the suicidal tendencies increased I could no longer keep it from Monica. 

She called the cops once, telling them that she was afraid I was going to hurt myself. I also called community mental health at one point, worried about the chemical imbalance of not having my depression medication but was told that I didn't qualify for the services I was asking for. 

I want to make this explicitly clear: though there are reasons or contributing factors that may have led to my depression, and then my suicide attempt, none of them do anything to take the responsibility away from me for what happened that night. 

I, and I alone, decided to drink vodka and to take pills to cope with my problems. I was the one who decided to try and take my life with my family in the house. I decided that my only option was to commit suicide. I decided to abandon the kids without a father and Monica without a partner in life.

I decided to find the gun, to load it with a bullet, and sit there on the stairs trying to work up the nerve to finally kill myself.

All alone in the apartment I drank and fell deeper into that downward spiral of depression. The little hope that I had been holding onto evaporated that night. I couldn't do it anymore. It was just too much. I decided that I was finally done, that the world and especially the people in my life would be better off without me. That it was finally time to end it all. 

I sat at the bottom of the stairs with the pistol in my hand, my head between my legs and my arms resting on my knees. I sobbed uncontrollably. Monica and the kids were upstairs, her and Cassius in our bedroom. I yelled for her to stay in the room. 

My arms, now folded across my knees, cradled my head. The pistol, in my right hand, rested on my left shoulder facing up the stairs behind me. I wanted it to be over, for this endless cycle, this bottomless void to finally come to an end. I thought of nothing but myself at that moment, if I had I wouldn't have been there. My despair was so strong, the pain so deep and intense, that everything else faded into the distant background. 

Before I lost my nerve, yet again, I lifted the gun to put it against my temple. As soon as I moved it from my shoulder it went off, right next to my left ear. Instantly something hit me in the back, knocking me forward on the stairs. It was Monica and Cassius. Cassius was a few steps above us, crying from the fall. Monica was silent. I was confused, nothing made sense. All of this happened in milliseconds, far too fast to process what had just happened.

What I didn't realize, while sitting on the stairs, is that Monica had walked out of the bedroom carrying Cassius and was standing at the top of the stairs watching when the gun went off, and I was too inebriated to realize that the hammer to the gun was cocked from the way I loaded it.

I grabbed the phone and called 911. I noticed a small spot of blood on the back of her shirt. I screamed in panicked gasps to the operator to get here fast. I said that I think my fiancé was shot, that she needed help and to hurry.

I remember the operator asked, “Who shot her?"

My heart fell in on itself. The words choked me and as I spoke them, the reality of what must have happened hit me. 

After a brief pause, I said, "Me. It was an accident." 

The next hour went by like a foggy nightmare. I was handcuffed and taken in one ambulance. Monica was taken in another. That was the last time I'd ever see her.

Something about the weight and tragedy made it feel hazy. Like a few layers of reality had been removed. Like it couldn't be real. Like I was waiting to wake up. I never did.

I wondered what was happening to the kids, who had them, where they were going. I hoped beyond words that there was still a chance that Monica would be okay. That I would see her again, to tell her again that I love her, that I was so sorry, that I'm so stupid that I was willing to put her through the pain—that of losing your other half—that I was now experiencing.

This is when the true punishment for my crime started. Worse than any amount of anger directed at me, worse than any prison sentence, is what happened that night when Monica died at my hands.

With my inability to cope with the pain and struggle I was going through, I rendered our kids not just motherless, but also fatherless. I'm responsible for taking the best person anyone could be lucky enough to know from their lives. It is my fault that her parents were left daughterless, her two brothers left sister-less, her friends left without her, her cousins, nieces, nephews, my mother and sister who were very close with her, all left with the void of beauty and love that she provided.

It's such a cliche to say this, but the world truly was a better place with her in it. I know that mine was. I lost her too that night. My best friend, the love of my life, the most supportive person I've ever known, the most warm-hearted and beautifully flawed person you'd ever meet.

She smiled too big, she smiled enough for everyone in the room, and that night I lost her too. And I had no one to blame, no one I could hate, no one to curse but myself. And in this place with nothing but time to reflect to figure it all out, that's what I began to do. It’s what she would have wanted. In a place like this, she would have stood by me, she would have waited for me through my whole sentence and been there for me every step of the way. She was the best thing I'd ever know and I killed her.

I explained what happened, again and again, I volunteered for a lie detector test and cooperated fully with the investigation. I was charged with involuntary manslaughter, use of a firearm while intoxicated causing death, felony firearm, and resisting and obstructing arrest. Because I was guilty and I didn't want anyone to suffer through a painful trial, especially the kids, I pled guilty to the charges. With no plea bargain, no negotiation, and no hesitation I pled guilty. 

Before that night I had never been convicted of a felony. This is when I first started to do whatever I could to ease the pain I had caused and to prevent any more pain, even if that meant it was at my expense. Every chance that I've gotten since that night I've tried to do what is right, not what is easiest, the most popular, or the most beneficial for myself. That is the mentality that caused all of this heartache and pain in the first place and I swore that it would never influence my decisions again.