We got a new guy a couple months ago. Not just a new guy,
but a first timer. It’s always interesting getting a new guy
because you can sort of see yourself in them and vicariously
experience when you first got sent in here, without actually
needing to experience it for yourself again. You wouldn’t think
you would want to even vicariously do that, considering how
surface level horrible the experience is, but there’s always
something appealing about it. It’s sort of a reminder of how far
you’ve come, I suppose. When he first came in, you could see it on
his face. The same look every guy has when they enter into
this new world for the first time. It’s an awareness of uncertainty
paired with a refusal to accept it. Fear masked by bravado.
The kind of bravado that needs bravado to prove itself;
the self-announcing sort, which is almost always a surefire sign
that there exists a fear in the person that the person hasn’t
even yet braved confronting. It was carried in the way he
walked and talked. He was still hopeful that he could force his
way through the whole thing. He was still hopeful that it wouldn’t
be what he knew deep down it would. New guys always do this.
I did it. The first day is the worst. And then the next
several dozens of days after aren’t really that
much better. You sort of exist in a weird state of limbo for a while,
while you go through the process of denial. Not even just
conscious denial, but a natural resistance to your new circumstances.
The first weeks and sometimes the first months are just
a transitioning period where your mind seems to have a lag
time behind reality. For a while, you are literally in this new
world, but all your senses and expectations are still in the old.
And in this, you find yourself sort of searching for something
that doesn’t exist anymore, fighting against the nothingness
met by your expectations. This is the hardest part. Coming
to terms with the change. And until you’ve come to terms with
being isolated and confined from your previous world, you definitely
haven’t come anywhere close to figuring out how to be ok
with it. Eventually though, you do. And for some, you
even come to like it.
But first, for most people, including myself, as the
initial days start to flip into weeks and months, you seem to
dip, for at least some period of time, into hopelessness. It
seems, for some reason, you have to go there first; as if
hopelessness is always on the way between two different states
of hopefulness, and it’s the only way through to other side.
I think anytime you’re confronted with how little control
you have; how cruel everything including yourself can be; how
easily everything can be taken away or flipped on its head; and
how truly helpless, dissolute, and alone you are; the only way
to keep hope is to quickly touch hopelessness first and feel how
bad it hurts. It’s like a little kid touching a hot stove or
lightbulb. You almost don’t believe it’s that bad. Or for some
reason, you’re just curious about how bad it really is, and you
have to touch it to believe it. Once you have, though, you’re
pretty much ready to take your hand off as soon as possible and
find some other way to live. That’s how it was for me at least.
Some people seem to get stuck there, though. Sadly. Some people
like the additional pain. Even after it had been something like 2 or
3 weeks since the new guy got here, he was still antsy every
day, all day; causing fights, acting strange, forcing himself
into this and that. Even when he was physically doing nothing,
you could see him racing around in his head, anxious and
guilty of his procrastination with reality.
In truth, you’re always isolated in yourself in your own
isolated section of the universe, but in here, you feel it both
metaphysically and physically. And I think that’s why it’s so
much harder to confront. But equally essential. It took me a couple months to properly get
passed it myself. Eventually, though, you don’t have
a choice. You either go mad fighting your present reality or you
face it. And then, eventually, you wake up and what once felt
completely foreign, feels completely normal. And you almost never
even notice.
Everything becomes a different normal than the normal before,
but it feels no less normal. That’s the interesting part about
normal; that it’s essentially always the same no matter what
form it takes. As soon as something becomes normal, it feels the
same as any other normal. Normal is just normal. Life can
somehow be entirely different, and yet it will likely, at some
point, feel mostly the same. I once read that after every 7 years or so,
every cell in the human body has completely regenerated and the body becomes made entirely
of a different collection of physical material. At which point, nothing that was once you
is you anymore. And across 7 years, your life circumstances are likely different too, if
not completely different. Meaning both your interior physical state and exterior circumstances
are constantly changing completely, and yet you always feel mostly the same. At least
in the sense that you still feel like you. It seems as if all processes of change in
life are sifted through the same colander of self, and the only thing that is ever consistent
on any level in any circumstance is that thing inside your head that continually identifies
you with you, despite what’s going on around and through it. And that’s sort of ultimately
what it all comes down to, I think. How well you exist with that strange, central you that
observes all the other dynamic and constantly changing yous.
If anything, it is this that solitude and separation
provides. The value and reformative nature of confinement is, at
least for me, not necessarily to develop into a different
person, but to properly face the strange, painful, difficult,
and almost inexplicable person you might really be. The person
who isn’t even really a person, but the thing that lacks a
complete and obvious person, but longs relentlessly for one. The
truth of what you might be, that you went to great, massive
efforts to otherwise avoid. And instead, you direct your efforts
to learn how to live with this, rather than always lashing and
flailing away from it. That’s where the real trouble came from
for me anyway. Eventually, if you’re strategy is to flail
violently against yourself in an effort to overtake it, you’ll
end up going to the end of the world, losing everything you have
and love, just to ultimately end up being put here, to confront
the same fact that you knew all along; that you always go with
you. Arguably, some level of solitude is inevitable
in any life. But perhaps, some level of deeper, intentional
solitude is necessary for a good one. At least for a period
of time. Even in a crowd of thousands of people, every
person is ultimately alone inside their head; as a solitary
receiver of everything. Everything and everyone is experienced
individually, skull by skull, moment by moment, once, for
all eternity. And
so, what does it mean to be a solitary receiver of a world of
noise, if when the noise is turned down, you can’t barely stand
it? Perhaps some decent amount of solitude grants
you the first step in confronting just how broken the receiver
inherently is; finally letting you hear the static buzz that’s
been humming in the background of everything, that you can
only notice when nearly everything else turns down. At first,
this humming drove me crazy; sometimes to the brink of all hopelessness;
but then, like everything else, you begin to adapt.
You begin to better accept it, learn how to live with it, and
use it properly, now that you know what’s been there causing
most of the problems. Granted this is all just my experience, and
I don’t wish to portray it as anything but that. Nor do I
wish to portray any conclusive awareness as to how I might turn
out and what this all might equate to when my term is over,
and I’m finally released back into the world. I think it probably
takes a full lifetime to ever know what you really are
and what good anything was for you. But if there’s any hope in
ever being ok in any version of life, despite this; any hope in
ever feeling like one has any level of agency over themselves while
in the chaos of the outside world; I think one must first
be able to feel ok and in control of themselves when nearly all other
factors of distractions have been subtracted, and your
freedom and sense of
life has been narrowed all the way down to your skull-sized
domain. I know everyone in here doesn’t have the
luxury of hope, but for those that do, I think it would only
be but another crime to squander it.
And I was happy to see that after about 3 or 4 months in,
the new guy chilled out; stopped causing fights; stopped acting
crazy; it’s mostly always the same. Eventually, everyone figures
out how to be ok. Eventually, you don’t have a choice.