Endemic Dread

I find myself with five toes in the panic pool. No matter what the day or hour, it always feels as if law enforcement is going to swoop down and take me away. Maybe it was something minor that I failed to do. Perhaps it was some regulation I violated that I didn’t even know about. Could be because they need something to occupy their time and that I would make an easy target for them. I could keep spinning scenarios, but after a few more I would probably need to hide under the couch just to catch my breath.

These are likely, at least most therapists would claim, irrational thoughts. I haven’t knowingly violated any law or rules since my release. Law enforcement probably has other issues to handle. It’s not about me. So, I guess that would make those thought both irrational and narcissistic. Nonetheless, they are real, and they are both depressing and paralyzing. If nothing else, I’d like for us to generally acknowledge that going to prison makes you paranoid. I know plenty of the never-incarcerated who are rightly worried about being surveilled by Big Tech and governmental Big Brother. In contrast, I’ve gotten rather used to being surveilled, thanks to the criminal system. I have spent years, and will continue to spend many more years, being watched as an imagined threat to the wholesome fabric of American society. Because I am known to have stained that fabric once, the presumption is that I will do it again. The presumption of on-going guilt is the backbone of our criminal rehabilitation system. The illogic of that approaches the illogic of my paranoia, but the former is a “true fact” consensus while the latter is just me.” I’ve been surveilled so much that, superficially, I don’t mind being surveilled. In the deeper crevices of my psyche, however, I mind it terribly. It wears me down and wears me out. What if they do come for me? What if I’m not ready. Yes, that seems kind of crazy, but it also feels crazy to me not to be ready. It seems foolish to go on about my life as if everything were normal, when normal ended the minute the police came through my door those not-so-many years ago. My normal will never align with the normal of most other folks, and it’s nearly impossible to explain that to people who haven’t been swallowed up by the criminal justice system.

If trauma is the reliving of past events and not being able to put them behind you in some definitive way, then trauma is the most effective outcome of the criminal justice system. No way I’m ever putting this experience behind me. Not only am I not allowed to do so — after all that’s what things like probation officers and criminal background checks make certain — I cannot allow myself to become that vulnerable. My paranoia is a self-defence in the face of the traumatic. Trust the people who put me away to not try to do it again? No thanks. There are ancient fables about that, just some of the many lessons I learned as a child. There is really no part of the system that’s here to help me though there are many parts of the system are there to help you be insulated and protected from the idea of me. Likely you haven’t been traumatized by me, but it’s certainly implied that you ought to be or that you could be, so don’t trust even the idea of me. I don’t know if that’s “good” paranoia or not, but it’s certainly a kind of cultural standard.

If you do happen to trust me, you are also going to be paranoid and traumatized. “How could you?” people will ask. You will have many anxious moments thinking about how I might, once again, be vacuumed up into the real heart of the system, whether I did something untoward or not. You will think about whether our relationship will be strained or shattered by something or someone utterly out of your control. You will have to assess whether advocating on my behalf, even when you are sure of your trust, will be anything short of useless for me and potentially detrimental to yourself. You know, all the kinds of thinking that mark healthy human bonds. And it will wear on you. For that I am deeply sorry.

The people of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional Boston eventually tried to reinterpret the meaning of Hester’s scarlet A. But hester never took it off, even when she was back in their good graces. Was she paranoid to think that she could only live on the outskirts of town and never fully engage with her fine, Puritan neighbors? Was her thinking irrational? Perhaps. But perhaps that’s the most clear-eyed reaction to trauma a person can have.