I’ve opened my ‘emotional box’

Can I close it again? Should I?

I lay in my bed the other night, stressing about what I could do to maximize my chance of gaining my freedom. Thanks to a new, COVID-related, D.C. law, my sentence has been recalculated to account for “good behavior,” making me parole-eligible. But that means returning to my previous “home,” the federal prison in Florida, since the parole commission refuses to conduct hearings at the D.C. jail (where I have been held for the past two years during an unsuccessful court proceeding).

I have been watching so many of my peers win their release under D.C.’s Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, making the real world seem tantalizingly close. I am soooo ready to follow them. The thought of going back to the deliberate chaos and punitiveness of federal prison is like a weight in my chest.

While I lay there, I had an epiphany. Before I came home to D.C. to fight for my release in court, and before this chance for early parole, I would never have spent my mental energy obsessing about my freedom. I wouldn’t even have cared where I did my time. I was so locked into my bid (the routine on which a prisoner relies to get through his time) that nothing…