I woke up to banging and yelling my eyes are still trying to adjusting to where I am at she at the cell door banging and yelling HELP ME HELP ME, GUARD, HELP ME, please. She has this fearful look on her face I ask what’s wrong she’s holding her stomach she is pregnant so I start yelling help as well for hours no body.

I felt like I was buried alive or better yet in a coffin. I was in what was called the slammer cell, in Ohio's maximum-security prison in Lucasville.
             The slammer cell was considered the hole inside the hole. It was solitary confinement on steroids. I had been put in this situation for attempting to stab another prisoner through the cell bars and in the midst of my rage, I allegedly spit on a prison guard.

I was trembling and nervous before I saw the judge. He was there while the deputies held the phone for conference court.

             I was charged with a misdemeanor and three felonies. I was so embarrassed and vulnerable. I was at the judge’s mercy. I could barely remember the scene of the crimes charged against me. 

The first time I went to jail I was 18. I began selling drugs to help provide for my family at a young age. In prison, I can honestly say I did not get the help I needed to rehabilitate. At times the conditions were unbearable. I felt the custodial officers and community correction officers were not there to help me, and they changed so often that it was hard to keep up. Police laughed and jeered at serious moments and did not offer support. No one recognized that I might need support as a victim of violence, PTSD and as a person who has experienced trauma.

I don’t really know where to start. It seems like this kind of thing would happen to me every time I went to jail. I am type 2 diabetic and I was under the impression that the jail would have the insulin that I take. Unfortunately, not in Adams County in Colorado.

It came again. That very first horrifying night terror that started the whole ball rolling. Darkness, me running for my life from something so evil it could make my heart stop, turning as I fall, looking up into a pair of extremely menacing eyes, waking up instantly, realizing I am back in my own special cell, tied down again.

A very near and dear friend of mine suffered “an injustice…!” due to an ambiguous policy regarding ex-felonies/prisoners possessing firearms while on probation or parole supervision.

             My friend, Reuben R., was violated and sent back to prison for having a “paintball” gun in his car trunk

I remember walking into that pod in prison. My first day I was so scared and felt so alone. The faces, the smell, the ugly hard concrete columns and floors. But then I was approached by a man with a bright smile and in his hand he had a cup of coffee. He spoke and said, you thirsty? I felt like I could take a breath. 

The bang from the gavel hitting the sound block had a sense of permanence, what had been said was said and court was adjourned. All I could see were the judge’s dry, pale, wrinkly hands. That's it. That's all I saw. My mind was taking longer than necessary to process the present. Was I really going to prison?

She had me pinned to the floor and I could not breathe. I knew at that point I was going to die. I could not breathe at all. I was worried about what she might do to my five-year-old son. All of a sudden there was a rush of air into my lungs.

Heroin. The first time I tried it was 1987. A person who I thought was my friend gave it to me. I thought they were my friend because a friend would not give someone something so bad, right? Heroin. I took it. It was the best feeling I have felt. I think I was floating. I think I was swimming in warm waters. I did not know what I was feeling but I know it felt good. Instantly I was hooked.

I wish I did not have to come here. I wish I didn't have to sleep on a metal piece hanging from a wall with a dusty sheet. I wish I didn't have to eat what seems like toxic waste for nutrition. I wish I had access to clean running water that did not come out of rusty fixtures....