#217 Don't take it personal (retro)

Don’t take it personal

It is just after 11pm as I begin this blog, I was going to wait until Friday, but since I had time, I figured I might as well blog out some thoughts. First off, thanks again to those of you who support my blogs, as I get more and more emails I get more encouraged that what I share is indeed helpful to some…but not to everyone.

Sometimes when I blog, some people take what I say as if I am making them an example, or if what I am saying to them is to belittle them in some way. Folks, if you TRULY feel that way, do one of two things…email me and talk to me like a person, or get out of my blogs.

I say this because what I will NEVER do on these blogs is talk to kiss somebody’s ego, I get enough of that crap in prison support sites because everybody wants to think that they know it all, when NOBODY knows it all. Yet having said that, I will bank my personal experience in prison against ANYBODY…I say again, ANYBODY, who has never set foot in there.

Still, I temper what I say by staying to you that I ask that you not take what I write so personal that you think I am attacking you. Some people get the wrong impression and get too offended when I talk about prison matters, and think that I am some idiot making this stuff up.

If you get the chance, back up to my blog about “the Middle ground” and read it, it is 10 pages of talk about the mentality of an inmate, and for a lot of you, it is something that may prove helpful. I wrote that because I had a couple of emails on it, and one in particular touched me to the point that I really felt that I should blog this out. So I did.

Now, you know me. I do not write short blogs, and I told you guys that I don’t write for people who are looking for short cuts or “Cliff Notes”. If you want a shorter version, this ain’t the place for it. This blog allows me to give you not 10%, not 30%, but as much as I can pour my heart into. For a lot of people, this is important enough not to cut corners. So I don’t.

But a lot of people don’t like my lengthy blogs…I say again, if you are not into reading long blogs…leave me alone.

Believe me, nothing anybody is going to say will change how I write.

But today I get a comment on my blog that I have to go back over. The first words out on this comment was…in some ways you write too much.

I will not apologize for that, I am not writing to please people who are missing what I am talking about, if I needed to write 100 pages, then that is what I will write. I got a few emails from some readers who thanked me for what I wrote, one very loyal reader said she loved my longer blogs because it allows me to really get into what I needed to say.

But the comment on my blog seemed to be a bit hostile in that I seem to be downgrading certain inmates. As the comment implied, I don’t seem to care about the lower level inmates, and also that this person does not give a…well, you know, about higher level inmates.

Rule to remember on my blogs…don’t EVER curse at me. I didn’t curse you, so show the same respect.

But there clearly is some misunderstanding in the comment. The idea that I seem to be talking about “lower numbers” is insane because if the person reading this has read my blogs, they would know I spent a heck of a lot of time in minimum custody. So I KNOW what they are going through, because I have been there…

And let me add this…I have been THROUGH it. So I know what it is like, not just to sit in prison, but to live after the incarceration is over. So what I am saying is not some flippant piece of information to downgrade inmates…I have been one. I take offense that the idea seems to be that I am making light that minimum custody inmates are having troubles.

What I said in that article was that any inmate in minimum custody that is still believing that violence is some answer is NOT ready for release. Remember folks, minimum custody inmates are largely the ones most ready to reenter society. If you have inmates with negative attitudes while in minimum security, especially thoughts that you need to defend your property with violence…that is a problem.

I think the problem some people have is that they keep thinking minimum custody is what you see on shows like “Oz” and “Prison Break”. Far from it. I never said that minimum custody was like Disneyland, but I will definitely say it ain’t a supermax. There is a world of difference in that.

I take offense to the idea that what I am saying is making those guys look like idiots, and that I never said. I didn’t write a few thousand pages to pick at inmates, because my readers are their mothers, wives, girlfriends, pen pals and others. So I get upset when somebody thinks what I write has no sincerity, when that is all I have been writing. But I get pissed too when people inaccurately dismiss what I share as crap.

Folks, do you understand what that middle ground is truly about? It’s about inmates needing to make positive decisions before they end up repeating their past. If a guy is sitting in prison worrying about defending his property on a minimum custody prison, he is not ready for society. Yet, this is NOT every guy, in fact, not most. If I sat here and remembered 100 inmates I knew while in minimum custody, I might say 80% of them are guys that, if given a legit chance, they could make it.

But there are guys in prison, in minimum custody prisons, that really just don’t care about anybody. They are just doing their time, saying the right things, so they can get out of prison…learning NOTHING about themselves except how to put “me” first.

These are the guys that will come back. And as the comment put it, “And they are the guys most likely to parole and those most likely to come back”. Why is that? Why do some guys come back to prison? Many reasons, too many to blog now, but one is that they never put an emphasis on thinking on positive things. They were too busy thinking about what is theirs, and defending what little they had like a hungry lion over a kill.

That is not conducive to self esteem, and until an inmate can clear that obstacle, the very words he speak is what he is about. What does it say, “from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks”. If an inmate is trying to defend the idea of being violent in prison, his mentality is set for prison…not society. A guy in minimum custody needs to change that thinking or he will fail in society.

The other idea was that what I suggested was that many inmates “fear” the future. And lots of folks don’t get that, because to be sure, inmates are not going to tell you their fears. It’s one of the codes of prison, along with not crying. I suggest to you that many inmate (not all) fear the future outside of prison, and for all the tough talk they can give, deep inside is a fear of failing…again. Fear of failing the people they love, especially their mom, wife or whomever. There is a fear of trying a new lifestyle, the fear of changing one’s habits, the fear of not living up to expectations of society. There is an anxiety and fear, yes fear, that can grip an inmate near his release because he goes literally from a society (prison) were all his needs are met, to one where, in one day, he can have nothing.

See, a lot of you don’t buy that because you think every inmate desires only to be free…I strongly disagree because I knew guys like that, and I have BEEN like that. But I say again, this is not for everybody, so don’t make rude comments with profanity acting like I am talking to every single inmate in the United States.

I will defend inmates to the hilt, and most of you who have been reading my posts know it, but let’s not kid ourselves either…some inmates don’t care about ANYBODY but themselves. I also learned something too, when I started blogging:

My idea was to try to write to help everybody, but I learned something, and was actually told this by some of my earlier readers. They loved my writing, but cautioned me that I can’t save everybody…so don’t beat yourself up trying to do it. I didn’t understand that at first, but through many posts I realized that there are people out there that never truly wanted to be helped…they wanted attention. Some people I tried to help, and they would not listen. My best example was a lady on a prison support site who believed her man in prison was cheating on her. She had proof and he even told her. She told me in an email that she was going to visitation and tell him that they are breaking up. I strongly advised against it, because there was no wisdom in it, and I also believed that inmates don’t like being shown up at visitation. She didn’t listen to me, went to the visit. The next time she emailed me, she told me she had to go the hospital because her man slapped her (during visitation) so hard that she may have fractured her jaw.

I felt terrible about it, but I did all I can do, I tried to prevent her, but her mind was made up. It goes to prove that on both sides of the prison wall, you cannot save a person that refuses to listen. The best you can do is give the info and advice, and hope they listen.

That goes for inmates just as much as those outside the prison. I cared a lot about some guys I knew in prison, but many times I could not help them when they would not listen. And some know how to say only what you want to hear. There are inmates out there in prison that have no intentions of doing anything positive, but will lie and tell you what you want to here, especially if it gets your attention.

That is not every inmate, again, but it is some. I can have 2000 people reading my blogs right now, but I can’t make not one person truly take what I say into their hearts. One thing I learned while in prison, and even before, it’s not what a person says…it’s what he says consistently, that shows the heart of a man.

So I will make an apology if what I shared seemed to say what it did not, but I do not, and will not, ever apologize for what I share. Nobody put a gun to my head to make me write 10 pages, that was from the heart. And I keep saying two things that I should not have to keep repeating, one, that I never claimed to know it all, and two, every inmate is different. What I share is based on my experience and what I have seen in prison, and never concocted to make it seem that “us medium custody guys” are better than minimum custody guys. That is insane.

I say again, if you have at odds with what I share, try emailing me in a kind way, so we may talk it out. I am no ignorant demon with no rationale, I have a heard and a mind just like you do, and I can reason if given the chance. But this thing about spitting profanity is not what I respond to. In prison, if a guy disrespected me, I left him alone and resigned myself to not be associated with that person at all. See, I don’t need to get violent, I just need to use my head. If it came to it, then I would defend myself, but some inmates think that is option ONE, instead of using their head. Those will be the ones that come back.

Outside of prison, when people disrespect me on my blogs or posts, I move on… without them, because there is no respect there. I have better things to do, such as writing more blogs. I am absolutely confident and have no questions in my heart that what I write has been, and will be very helpful to many, many people who need understanding. My intent is to give it as best as I can.