Having left Attica some forty years ago I can look back and see that it was a learning experience...
Coming to prison for the first time and ending up at the infamous Attica was scary. It was like landing on another planet. I knew my life would never be the same. The world as I knew it was gone forever.
Now it was all about surviving and learning how to navigate in a stormy and hostile environment. In retrospect, I wish I had done some things differently. There were situations I could've handled better. While at other times I could say I handled things better than I first thought I would.
I also believe that God was watching over me to keep me out of harm’s way. And whenever something bad happened, God somehow turned it around for my good. And this was at a period in my life when my mind was still a mess, and I had no sense of hope of a better future.
Back in Attica I was merely existing. Incarceration can do terrible things to one's mind. "Prison will either make you or break you," as I have so often heard fellow cons say. It's true. You find yourself continually on guard. You never know what could happen. A fight could break out which has nothing to do with you, but the guards who arrive to break it up may order all of us back into our cells, and we could remain on lockdown for hours, even for the remainder of the day.
With all this comes the worrying and fretting over one's family. "What's my wife doing now?" "Are my kids okay?" "I just learned through a letter sent four days ago that my mother was rushed to the hospital." Things like this can drive a man crazy. You feel so helpless and out of the loop. It wears you down.
Such is a man's life when to a large degree he is cut off from society. A prisoner lives a life of worry and stress, and of not knowing what is going on outside the walls. I wince whenever I hear people speak of convicts having it easy. They will watch a television program about prison and will see some guys playing basketball in a fenced in concrete yard, and it looks as if they're having a great time. If only the public knew the truth.
D. B.
Now it was all about surviving and learning how to navigate in a stormy and hostile environment. In retrospect, I wish I had done some things differently. There were situations I could've handled better. While at other times I could say I handled things better than I first thought I would.
I also believe that God was watching over me to keep me out of harm’s way. And whenever something bad happened, God somehow turned it around for my good. And this was at a period in my life when my mind was still a mess, and I had no sense of hope of a better future.
Back in Attica I was merely existing. Incarceration can do terrible things to one's mind. "Prison will either make you or break you," as I have so often heard fellow cons say. It's true. You find yourself continually on guard. You never know what could happen. A fight could break out which has nothing to do with you, but the guards who arrive to break it up may order all of us back into our cells, and we could remain on lockdown for hours, even for the remainder of the day.
With all this comes the worrying and fretting over one's family. "What's my wife doing now?" "Are my kids okay?" "I just learned through a letter sent four days ago that my mother was rushed to the hospital." Things like this can drive a man crazy. You feel so helpless and out of the loop. It wears you down.
Such is a man's life when to a large degree he is cut off from society. A prisoner lives a life of worry and stress, and of not knowing what is going on outside the walls. I wince whenever I hear people speak of convicts having it easy. They will watch a television program about prison and will see some guys playing basketball in a fenced in concrete yard, and it looks as if they're having a great time. If only the public knew the truth.
D. B.
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