03/02/12

   If I had access to a computer right now, I'd google institutionalized and see what came up. I think I weathered the storm pretty well. There's no denying though, that all that time had an impact on me. How can you measure to what extent an experience changes a person?
   In my mind, an institutionalized person is a man that has been locked up so long that he prefers the predictability of a controlled enviroment to the uncertainty of freedom. Someone who is fully at home in prison. I think of the old man in Shawshank Redemption who winds up hanging himself, unable to make the transition to society. He was comfortable inside and scared to leave, kind of opposite of the way it should be, right?
   I have witnessed some extreme institutionalization. The most pathetic example is seeing a long incarcerated man begin to link his self concept to his work detail. Maybe this isn't so hard to understand. Many people identify themselves by their occupation, one of the first questions we ask someone when we first meet them is, what do you do? For someone who has been incarcerated for 20 years, what they "do" is something menial and mind numbing. They pass out chemicals to the dorms for cleaning up, or buff the hallway outside the wardens office, or stack the chairs in an orderly row after church service. And their identity becomes John the chemical cart man or Deon the chaplains orderly. They do their task with the utmost seriousness. They take on a self important air. They embrace the roll given to them by the Classification Commitee. What gives a man like this satisfaction, more than anything else, is praise from his detail officer. He has been assimilated.
   It's hard not to be scornful of these types. They represent the breakdown of the will to fight the system. In their quest for acknoledgment from the prison staff, it's easy to see these men have more daddy issues than strippers. Solidarity with their peers no longer matters. They want the acceptance of the oppressor, and that in itself is a sign of mental illness.
   A person is institutionalized when the narrow world of prison becomes the only world they know or remember. To a certain extent I relate to this feeling. I never did enough time to completely forget my life before incarceration, but after 3 or 4 years it did seem like another life. A ten year sentence was such an abstract amount of time, my mind couldn't fully accept it or see beyond it. I just knew that I was locked up, was going to be locked up for a long time, and that one day they would let me go again. When I thought about being released, it was like a distant mirage, just a pleasant fantasy. My life was the day to day of prison.
   Regardless of how strong minded a person may be, if they serve enough time, they will be affected. It's easy to make light of what a fucked up thing it is, to be taken away from society and forced into these wack-assed institutions, these human warehouses. We use gallows humor, while we are inside here, as a form of armor. Behind the bravado and the attitude, this incarceration shit is dehumanizing us, hurting our families, wasting our time, and almost guaranteeing us a brand new set of problems when we do finally come home again. It's nothing to laugh at really.
   I get pretty comfortable in prison. Life goes on, human nature is resilient and we adapt, make the most of a negative place. Even inside the penitentiary, I challenged myself in the realm of physical fitness, stmulated my mind through reading and correspondense courses, learned some spanish, enjoyed recognition from my peers, formed meaningful freindships, and watched time pass by as I tried to avoid getting killed(or stumbling into a situation where I'd be forced to kill someone else). It wasn't all bad, it wasn't all soul-destroying. It was what it was.
   I'm not qualified to judge the cumulative effect this time and these experiences had on my psych. If money were no object I would go get analyzed. Certainly, I never went through anything like a combat veteran with PTSD might have endured, never lost a limb or watched my buddys body explode right in front of my face. I wouldn't say that my experiences have left me scarred for life, although I very literally am, in the physical sense. More correctly, I say that prison shaped me.
   From 18 to 26, I was locked up. These are important years for a person, fomative years. It's during these years that people enter the adult world, earn degrees, learn trades, cohabitate, have kids, perhaps get married. Of course many have little to show for themselves by the time they turn 26, but you'd have to be living in a cave(or a prison) to have missed out on the experiences of early adulthood.
   Comparing the average young mans life trajectory to my own, I've had a wealth of unique challenges and an absense of some essential stepping stones. My natural progression has been blunted, retarded by years of being stuck in one place. I just completely missed the opportunities to learn the things normal people are learning during this stage.
   What I missed out on is significant, but the things I learned instead are what really fucked my head up. I guess its all in how you react to the things you see and hear, your individual way of dealing with it. I'm a really introspective person, and the whole time, I;ve been taking notice of my surroundings, learning about human nature, and cming to understand how cold-hearted and sick people can be. Prison burned alot of suspicion and distrust into my heart. I look at people sideways. I wonder if they're real, wonder if they'd tell on me to stay out of trouble, wonder if they have a bunch of racism and hatred inside. I'm shell-shocked. Watching the constant predator vs prey exchange, coming to believe you have to be one or the other, it's hurt my development as a person. A stark contrast, black and white, no grey area. This belief system doesn't translate to free society.
   Out in the great big world, I discovered that many people are ready to lend a helping hand. Many more are indifferent, but compared to the pen, far fewer live to take advantage of the weak, and at least on the surface, there is less hatred and rage. Life outside is safer and peoples motives are more benign. The ever present threat of physical violence, a daily reality inside, is notably more absent for most civilian people.
   All this means that a distrustful, defensive posture is unnecessary and conspicuous once you walk into society. Shaking that outward appearance is easier than getting rid of the voice inside that says people are dangerous, people are liars, people will cheat you.
   The amount of choices in society often overwhelms. My first time walking beyond a prison gate, I left on a job pass from a transition center with my then girlfreind, we stopped at a gas station first, and walking down the isles, I tripped out on how many different things you can choose from at Quik Trip. It was a visual overload. She steered me out of the store, commenting that I looked like a tweaker who had been up for a week. What I felt like was an autistic kid staring at shiny bubbles in the sink. It hypnotized me.
   That was a minute ago, but a McDonalds menu is still enough to make me cringe. Any menu really. I end up ordering the same thing. There's too much input. It overwhelms. I go in a Walmart for 10 minutes and I want to get out. I don't remember being like this before I went to prison.
   Overall, my conclusion is that it is going to take a minute for me to work through the process of reacclimatizing myself to the real world. 7 1/2 years taught me all the wrong things. It's only normal to expect  that the path to a normal, well adjusted life will be a rocky road sometimes. Not trying to make excuses, just my observation.
   My prognosis is bright compared to many, many people. I believe I will recover from my institutional experience. There's lots of lost souls who don't have the smallest chance though. Releasing them is just a formality. The corrections system has them trained to come back, to return to their home.