April 29, 2020: I'm not ashamed to admit having had thoughts of suicide

I am not ashamed to admit to having had thoughts of suicide. Almost three decades ago, I came into this prison system as a teenager with so little life experience and even less adult emotional experience. While at the reception center, awaiting eventual transfer to prison, I remember a face now no more than a blur of color with little more detail than a painter's single brush stoke. He and I stood in the chow line as he asked quite directly if they had given me105 years to Life. I can't exactly remember how his and I exchange went after his initial inquiry, however, I can clearly hear his follow up question. "Do you wanna borrow my sheet?" He strolled away from me as if he'd slayed a stage and dropped the mic, leaving me stunned at the implication and not knowing how to respond. There was a time, just a decade or so back, when the imagine of suicide returned to me so vividly that I could literally taste it in my mouth. Equally ironic, that again it would come to me while walking through a prison chow hall line. Such land mark moments are etched in the trunk of what is my memory, along side what has been most recently craved by the sharp edge of COVID. If any similarities can be drawn between my trunks cravings, it is the deep feeling of loneliness and abandonment associated with each. Not in a human sense of relationships, but more from a feeling of being abandoned in life itself. Watching the stories on television that showed the heartache and pain of people who were losing loved ones to the virus, reminded my soul and conscious of the heartache and pain I've been the cause of. Touched out of guilt, or empathy, or similarity I cried. Silently and to myself. Tears formed under the softness of my lashes and spilled in descension down my cheeks. A freedom in my emotions, I felt connected to the moment I was sharing with a life that wanted me to know I was abandoned. So I cried again, deeper. Ignoring the compulsion to hide my tears from the guys around me, for I had nothing to hide. COVID testing began for this prison's population and eventually reached this particular dorm I live in. With it came an announcement made to us 170 men that those of us testing negative would be taken out of this dorm and moved into the gym. A gym no longer used for sporting activities but whose floor had been filled with perhaps 80 steel bunk a military style barracks for the negative patients to sleep. 80 of the170 men tested negative, I was 1 of the 80 and therefore had to pack my belongings and move into the gym barracks. Regardless of the gyms living inconveniences, I was happy to accept them in order to be able to call home and share my negative results to my COVID test. However, after calling my friends, family and loved ones expressing my relief and happiness, about 8 hours later, we received devastating news. A staff member entered the gym announcing there had been a mistake made. That any persons name appearing on this list held high had actually tested positive and therefore must re-pack your property if your name is called, you must pack your belongings back up and return to where you just came from because you have tested positive. My name was not on it, but a few of my friends were. Of the 80 who were of the mass movement into the gym, 50 of them moved back. Again, I called home and told the story of what was happening. As I settled in to my new digs, I only got a few hours rest before waking up to another announcement, another list and another mistake. If your name was called, you needed to move to this side of the gym, and if your name is not called, you needed to be on the other side of gym. When the dust settled, there were only six people on the side of the gym which was designated the negative side. However, the affects of the stress and pressure coming from what my shoulders already carry in general, what my empathetic nature absorbs from the stories reported from the real time front line fights, and the affects on my anxiety level having this otherwise reliable prison environment become unstable wore on me plenty.