Remember before you’re reminded

When the lockdowns eventually end, appreciate what you missed most

As I compose this post, I’m lying in a small cell on a hard, cold steel bunk, covered with a pallet I fashioned out of three blankets (I discard prison mattresses because they make my back stiff), surveying The “comforts” afforded to me during my forced COVID-19 isolation include a sink and a toilet; a cramped desk I’ve converted into my dresser, on which I place the few commissary items I can afford to buy; a couple of books to transport my mind outside my restrictive confines; a radio that gets poor reception; some writing materials; a newspaper; a Sudoku puzzle for distraction; and a tablet loaded with the coursework for my Georgetown University Prison Scholars program. This is my world, day in and day out.

I’ve been thinking about how people “in the world” (the phrase we use to describe everyone who isn’t in prison) have begun to compare their forced isolation due to the stay-at-home orders to being locked up in jail. It would be easy for me to cite any one of a thousand experiences I’ve been forced to endure during my 24 years behind bars to discredit this comparison. But I won’t do that because it would selfishly invalidate the feelings of others and their own reality. I would not like it if someone who has not walked in my shoes attempted to tell me what it is “valid” to feel. So, instead…