Recovery Awareness

During a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, I began journaling about my experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Journaling is a reflective exercise and has changed the way I live my life. I was able to look in-depth at my life and the choices that I’d made that led to a prison cell.

Journaling helps one get to know themselves by answering questions, such as: Who am I? It becomes a tangible record of one’s development as a person, the person there striving to be. It allows one to track their progress and reflect on failures as they continue to grow.

It has been ten years since being released from prison and I still journal each and every day. The exercise helps me process my emotions which helps my mental health and physical wellbeing.

I have decided to share some of my journal entries with those who wish to read. These journal entries reflect my experiences, thoughts, feelings, and opinions during my time incarcerated. If someone learns or is inspired from what I share, then I’ve succeeded in giving something back.

Grey - Part 1

I am capable of great pleasure and pain. Truth has advocates who seek understanding. Corruption is enforced by fanatics through intimidation and brutality. Everyone has a dark side, a hunger for the macabre and the ability to dispassionately dismiss the agony of another. This is the truth of individuality.

We are self-centered people; we see the world through our own eyes and there is always guilt. I have conditioned myself, my eyes, to see just one thing. It is neither white nor black, good, or bad, sad, or happy, but it is all of these. It doesn’t influence a particular mood but is a mood in of itself. It is a color; it is the source of indifference; it is grey.

If you saw the world as I do your mood like the sky would always be grey. Occasionally the sun could poke its head out and lift your spirits or maybe the fury of a storm would send you running in fear. But outside of these rare occasions, there is only the grey.

Imagine a world without color, without emotion and the indifference it represents. Could you live like this? I could and I did for years because it was easier going through life this way. I could be indifferent to everything and everyone around me.

I embraced the grey. I didn't see any point in feeling. What was the purpose? Why should I hope for the sun to shine on me only to be disappointed when it rained on me? I didn't have to spend my life going from one extreme to another when grey offered a constant, offered stability. Grey allowed me the freedom of choosing when the sun shined or it stormed without the disappointment of relying upon one or the other. I could let people around me influence my mood and I did. I allowed them to control me (my mood), they just didn't realize it.

You see, I love a debate, the defiance and the argument. I'll take a stance against an issue people accept as truth just because someone long dead said it was true. I live for these occasions. The shock I put on people's faces intoxicates me. Grey gives me the option of listening to reason and then picking through the bullshit. Most of this is done by listening to the stupidity of another's ideals, especially when those ideals are based on faith alone.

Grey gives me the option of having an opinion or not and if I do, have an opinion; I can express my opinion or carry on with indifference. Grey offers a freedom unmatched by anything I have experiences thus far.