free as a bird now
Today, after an ordeal lasting nearly five-and-a-half years from start to finish, I'm finally free of the corrections system.
My three-year stretch of "post-prison supervision" ends today, exactly three years after I emerged from the giant grey crypt.
I am now, as the cons say, "totally off paper." I still have two felonies on my record ... and in thirty-nine states, another felony would win me life imprisonment ... but in terms of being "under arrest"—from handcuffs to jail time to parole officers—the system no longer has its claws under my skin. I'm not being monitored or forced to attend classes or pay fines or fill out a monthly status report.
And I'm not behind bars.
I'm just like you again, except I could never really be just like you again. Incarceration changes you so dramatically, it's almost as if you've been dyed a different color.
If you've been locked up, even for a day, you know how I feel. But if you've never even been handcuffed, you have no idea. You're over there, on the other side, one of those people.
I'm going to take Cookie for a long walk today in the rain.
I'm going to take a long hot shower by myself, instead of with fifty other guys.
I might even buy my ex-parole officer a dozen roses. She was cool with me throughout, a buoy of sanity in a heartless system bent on crushing everything human within you.
Alive. Ha, ha—still alive.
