Who’s Afraid of The Kid? June 12, 2008

  Four steps turn, four steps turn…four steps turn.  Again and Again I pace my cell thinking.  Going on the roller-coaster ride that is my mind.  Sometimes my thoughts are so bright and clear, I can see into the vast expanse of the world, similar to when the car stops at the top of the roller-coaster.  You can see everything for miles and miles.  With one unsettling push I’m thrown back into my seat, the air rushes past my face as I spiral into unknown depths, the twists and turns of my mind, confronting past, present and future demons, my thoughts, my companions.

I have been in Administrative Segregation (ad-seg) since November 28, 2007.  My first time officially ad-seged but not the first time the powers that be, who now own and control my life, have deemed it necessary to segregate me from the rest of population.  Rewind to March 8, 2001.  A 40 something mother pleads with the District Attorney’s “investigator” for her son, who was assured when they agreed to the interview, she would be allowed to leave with her son.  Only an over zealous jackass, convinced that the harrowing tale he heard hours earlier from my 15 year old friend, was true.  If only he knew how mentally unstable Issac was and how many times his tale would change.  I can only wonder if he would have still arrested me?  A hearing is held the next day to transfer me from juvenile custody to the Park County Jail, an adult facility with no experience or accommodations for juveniles, but I am their trophy, their prize, to exhibit to all the world.  Dressed up at every court hearing in bullet proof vests and chains, as one smart &*%* pig put it “We’ll make you look like Hannibal Lector without the mask.  I’ll see if I can find you that mask.”  As he laughs, I only wish this nightmare would end and they would all be gone when I woke up, if only I knew it was just beginning.

Park County, in its infinite wisdom, decides that rather than asking to hold me in a juvenile facility, they would keep their trophy in their segregation.  One of two cells facing each other, with a shower between them, located in the back of the jail by receiving.  Alone, I spent the next four months in a cell with a camera watching my every move, at first the light stayed on 24 hours a day, helping me become more disoriented, losing track of any sense of time.  I am treated like a rabid animal, my food shoved through a tray slot in the door.  My shower time, I am buzzed out of my cell but only after the guard places my towel and the Bob Barker soap on the floor, then retreats behind a second door.  This is the first time I have ever experienced people fearing me and hating me, something I would soon grow accustomed to, but at the time I wanted to scream, “Don’t be scared, I am just a kid!”  Why won’t anyone talk to me?  What’s going on?  Eventually I receive visits from my family who can leave a few books to read and money, so I can buy stuff from Park County’s inflated commissary, where it costs $1.20 for a hotel sized bar of Dial soap.  Thus my first four months in jail were spent in fear and confusion but never again would solitude be a tool successfully employed to “control” me.  I have learned to thrive, love and become immune to solitude.  With that I will leave you with a quote from Schopenhauer “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone and if he does not love solitude he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”          

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