Happy Thanksgiving From The Prison Industrial Complex
It's 7:35, Thanksgiving morning. I'm sitting on a stack of plastic chairs in the unit bathroom waiting to take a shit.
I hate holidays behind bars.
I passed the dayroom on my way here. It is already buzzing with activity. Empty packets of Ramen noodles fill out the trashcans, even in the bathroom. Their former contents fill out the bowls.
Stuffing.
People I never see up this early are already stirring, pouring, chopping, mixing, and microwaving, while I'm trying to get my wits about me. Celebrating holidays in the joint are an attempt at normalcy, I guess, or an excuse for gluttony, depending on your level of cynicism.
Mine has been a little high of late.
Sometimes I bring my tablet into the bathroom when I'm shaving or shitting. Mood music. Which is why I have it now, but while I'm waiting I figured I should drop a few lines, among other things, cause I'm feeling some type of way.
We have four toilet stalls on our side of the unit. Tradition dictates that only two stalls are used at a time, to keep an empty stall between active shitters. It's stupid, but most traditions are. It's a tradition I adhere to only when time and biology permits. I'm afforded both this morning, so I'm waiting, and writing.
Deuce dropping is the latter phase of my morning ritual before getting ready for whatever it is I'm going to do for the day. Today it's a weight-pit day. I'm hoping it'll be empty out there due to the holiday, and the snow. I'm hoping no one wants to work out on Thanksgiving. Before it's my turn on the porcelain, I want to finish getting this not-so-festive mood out of my head and into this tablet. I could pick out almost anyone in the unit from their footwear and pants alone. From this knee-down line up, I'm guessing I'll have some time to figure out what it is I'm feeling this morning. When you share a bathroom with a 159 roommates you get to know each other in ways you'd rather not.
It's not even eight O'Clock and the floor is already plastered with islands of wet toilet paper and discarded TP tubes.
Every year that passes I get a better understanding of the sub-dermal angst and general pissy-ness of many of the elder convicts around here. Anger, roused as retaliation against the happiness in others, for the misery it reflects in you, must seem easier than finding happiness yourself. I've felt this way before. I think we all have. Only now, I understand it. It's a secondary emotion, a transmuted sadness; to be FELT, sure, but to not to be LIVED in.
You can't let the things that seem to come so easily to others, like general happiness, be the fuel for your frustration. It will kill you. It almost did. On several occasions, it was almost the end of you. It WAS undoubtedly the end of your life as you knew it. Letting that weight overwhelm you; It's what landed you in here.
The beauty is that you already know what to do when this feeling threatens to lay siege to your mind state. You already know that negativity begets itself, as do half-full glasses. So stop focusing on what's empty and start--
Oh, a stall just opened up.
We'll talk later.
Other priorities.
Happy holidays from the Prison Industrial Complex.
Oh, and go easy on the relatives this Thanksgiving. It may be the last time all of you are together like this. Focus on the love out there, be glad for the chance, and I'll try and do the same in here.