Grew up in the projects and had many many friends,
Was a Deacon and Boy Scout, but being like Mike was the plan,
Was sexually abused by several women and kidnapped and molested by a man,
Then developed behavioral problems that no one could understand,
Quit church and abandoned the pack and with the street life made a pact,
Drug and sex addiction ruled my world, but eventually bounced back,
Started going back to school and even found a job,
Met a girl who won my heart and even surrendered my life to God,
But as soon as life was getting good was met with a roadblock — was wrongfully incarcerated.
Was a Black male in the wrong place on the wrong block.
When the jail cell closed my life had come to a halt,
My mind raced and I paced the floor a lot — I questioned God, hated the world and against the system,
developed a plot.
Vowed to seek revenge but was let free, and without any from of counseling or apology was
enraged and trapped mentally.
Hit the streets cold-hearted and consumed all the drugs I could, involved in high risk situations,
Yes the pleasure felt good, but soon realized that I’d never be understood, or accepted anywhere so believed that dying would bring me peace and free me from all the pain,
I swallowed many pills and woke up in so much pain, connected to machines and IVs hanging out my veins, dodged death once again but couldn’t dodge the bars and chains,
Was sent to prison at age twenty and i’m now thirty-five,
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, every day is a fight to survive,
No one really wants to die, but the pain will always resurface,
and death is much better than living in a prison cell feeling worthless.
Found himself writing away the pain, having overwhelming support from family and friends, and finding a reason to carry on every day because I’m still in God’s hands.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.