When you're "inside", as every con calls it, every day is exactly the same. Wake up, eat, work, eat, sit around, sleep. Repeat. If you kept to yourself, which is what I always did, then there was no variation, no worries. Only the comforting stability of a lifer. I can't say I ever felt at peace, though.
Peace was a luxury of the free man, not a caged monkey like myself. Nope, peace eluded me. Actually, it not only eluded me; I slowly but surely fell into a deep despair as if I was being lowered centimeter by centimeter into a dark, dank well. It happened so slowly, in fact, that I never even saw it coming.
Rather ironic, I know, but it was the dog gone truth. Before I knew it, I was up to my ears in the worst decay imaginable: decay of the soul. It eats you up and it spits you out, time and time again. Just when you think you can see above it, you get pulled even lower into the rotten sewage. My momma always told me, "Boy, if you do only one thing make sure it's keeping your head above water." Sorry, Momma, this is just too deep for me. Years passed like this without any warning at all. They just slipped through my fingers like sand. Until one day.
This punk ass kid in the cell next to me started harassing me on this unusually sunny morning. I told him to leave me the hell alone, but he just kept buggin' me, saying he needed some cigarettes or a dollar or something. I don't know; I wasn't really listening. All I know is one of the guards arrived in front of our cells before you could say "quicksand". The next second I was being dragged to the hole, and then I was thrown in there without a word.
The first few days in there flew by effortlessly. The third day, though, was when the darkness started engulfing me. Like the well water of despair, it slowly but surely covered my soul in its inky blackness. I tried screaming for help, but, of course, nobody came. I had no choice but to let it swallow me whole. I must have screamed so loud the next town could hear me for I could feel my throat burning and burning and burning. I fell through space, clutching onto nothing, gaining more and more speed. Just falling into forever. I'm quite certain this would have happened for the rest of time if I didn't hear that voice: the voice of an angel. She cut through the darkness, like glass, her sweet voice ringing in my head like church bells, speaking of salvation.
"Mark," she whispered gently, making me freeze in mid air, suspended by her miraculous presence. "Mark," she said again, this time a little more pleading, a little less mothering. "Why are you doing this, Mark?" The question woke something up inside of me I had long forgotten existed. "Doing what?" "Allowing yourself to die." Every word she spoke chipped away at the darkness like a pick to a cell wall. They infused me with strength, the strength to look at myself.
"I am nothing, I am already dead," I muttered, not fully believing it anymore, but not knowing how or why.
"Who is dead, Mark?"
"I am," I said, wondering if she was even listening to me.
"How can you be alive and dead at the same time?"
"Because I'm in prison, I'm in the hole, there's no way out, I'm not ever getting out," I started to sob, the first time since I could remember.
"Those tears could only belong to a free man."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"You can feel, Mark, you are alive, you can't die. No one can take your life from you for you are life. Don't you see?"
"No, I don't see. I am in great pain, I live in darkness. This isn't life."
"You're right, Mark, it isn't life. You've made it all up. The darkness, the despair, the pain. You made it up and now you're holding onto it. Why don't you just let it go?"
The last three words reverberated in my mind as I, once again, plummeted through space. I was all alone again, filling up with despair when suddenly I landed on what felt like soft pillows. I looked all around and saw nothing but the clear, blue sky. "I must be in heaven," I thought.
From a distance, the angel's voice called, "You are heaven, Mark. Don't forget that again."
I opened my eyes and saw the darkness of the hole. This time, though, it didn't envelop me. Actually, I enveloped it with my light. Later on, I enveloped my cell with that light as well and everyone I encountered. I became the light I never knew I was.
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