Prison Gives You A Lot of Time to Think

I highly recommend using it to work on yourself.

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

I think we’re all guilty of getting in our own heads in a negative way. Maybe not even negative so much as overthinking things. I know I am. However, one thing I’ve gotten much better at since being here in prison is using this time to think and work on myself.

When I was in the outside world, I would overthink everything when I had too much time on my hands. It was easier to blame my upbringing rather than look internally and see what I could change about myself to correct whatever was going on in my life. Why consider changing things about me, when I could just chalk it up to a fucked up childhood?

Don’t get me wrong, my traumatic upbringing most assuredly had a lot to do with why I made some of the choices I did. However, that didn’t give me an excuse for behaving in the manner I did more often than not. But the saying “hurt people hurt people” exists for a reason, and sadly, I did a lot of hurting, more often than not, my wife who damn sure didn’t deserve it.

I’m thankful she decided I was worth waiting for. Not that I was going anywhere (other than prison I guess) but waiting for in terms of growing the fuck up and learning to take ownership of my bullshit and accountability for my actions.

Unfortunately, it did take me going to prison to get to a place in life where I was ready to do that for the long haul.

One of the things I say on repeat in here to these guys I am trying to help (re: spend any amount of time with and make it tolerable) is to work with what you have. Within this system, there may not be a lot of chances for true rehabilitation, however, that doesn’t mean you can’t be rehabilitated.

You can help yourself.

But you have to want to. No one is doing this time other than you (and yes, your family if you have it, but that’s a different story) so it stands to reason no one else can work your programs or your therapy or the healing you need to do other than you.

That will be true whether you’re inside or in the real world.

While your partner, family, or whomever can absolutely be there for you and help in myriad ways, none of those…