Obviously I haven’t been posting much lately. I’d like to say it was because of some sort of “writer’s block,” but that’s not an accurate enough reason. Frankly, I have been in a bad psychic way the past few weeks, and when that kind of depression kicks in, it’s difficult for me to sit down at a keyboard.
The irony is that writing is one of the things that actually makes me feel productive and useful. It’s a kind of burdensome task that can make me feel unburdened. Yet in the face of a depressive episode a wall goes up and a voice cries out from on top of it saying, “It’s not worth the pain you might feel to write to try to alleviate some of the pain you are feeling right now. Writing is bad medicine.” And so I spiral down and down. Here I am this morning, trying not to listen to that voice, but it’s a loud voice, and I don’t know if I can quiet it.
Those of you who might have known be well before my inmate days might recognize that I have always had a rather melancholic personality. I suppose that might give me some practice when it comes to staying with the pain, just trying to ride the waves of hurt rather than self-medicating them into oblivion. Or maybe it’s just the opposite. I really don’t know.
As a melancholic (and I love that old-fashioned phrase for all kinds of reasons), I’m pretty much the furthest thing from an optimist. I don’t have it in me to say, and more importantly believe, “Things will get better. There is such a promising future ahead.” Having been out of prison for roughly six months now, that wall of pessimism is growing brick by brick, day by day. What is especially disturbing to me is that I was more optimistic while I was inside. Perhaps that is an inevitable defense mechanism. How does one get through a phalanx of days designed to punish without becoming enamored of plans and dreams for the years to come? “When I get out, I can’t set myself up to be a success! When I walk through these gates, I can start fresh and do great things.” Optimism and patience are the only means of psychic survival.
Then you get out. You get out and you discover that you have virtually nothing to talk about to people who haven’t been in your orbit of optimistic denial for the last years. I never understood that it would be a intimidating task to talk with people about their everyday life experiences. I worry that it seems as if I don’t really care, but I think I have lost both the vocabulary and the practice to engages at “normal” levels. I have spoken a different language for so long that my previous tongue has started to slip away. Additionally, I have just missed out. People’s children have grown and moved on with their lives, I don’t know anything about those kinds of things for which everyday chat provides maintenance and upkeep. I no longer have any real professional connections, so even work chatter is at a far remove. When I do engage in some glancing work chatter, I’m reminded that I no longer have a profession. In fact, I don’t have a job at all, and that makes me feel as if I shouldn’t open my mouth at all.
Six months into life after prison and I just got my 40th job rejection (or — and this is a new to me — nonresponse about an application, which I’m assuming is the new rejection). Too old. Too qualified. Too convicted. Not up to speed with what’s going on now. Not appropriately trained. Too visible in a Google search. Too many assumptions made about my past, and not enough people will to take a chance at pushing past those assumptions. All initial evaluations made on surface characteristics, and virtually none on the substance that might lie beneath. Were I am optimist, I could hope for “The One” to come along, but being a pessimist, I look at the data of my experience and see another segment of wall rise before me. I also think about how I could go back to the work I did before and probably be a better, more rounded, and more engaged professional than I was before. A greater asset than I was. But reputation trumps reality. Conservative safety trumps dynamic risk, and I know that part of the wall is sealed to me forever.
Six months out of prison and I start to truly notice how prison has shaped me. Whatever rehabilitation I may have gained from incarceration, it is certainly outweighed by the stigma is has given me and the social dexterity is has sapped from me. It’s beautifully twisted to think how, when I was an active but undiscovered felon, I fit into the world so much more nicely. I had a reasonable optimism more closely in my grasp.
And so I’m back to this blog, trying to write my way over, around, or under some portion of this wall. There was, I believe, much more I was going to say on this topic and in this post, but in the middle of putting finger to keyboard, the proverbial Person from Porlock showed up. A federal probation officer on an unannounced visit. If there is a best way to have the wall go back up again, that has to be a top contender for the title.