Life is really so much more than most of us make it out to be. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard “life is short so make the most of it.” This phrase has always made me cringe and feel like it’s a race to see who can get the most accomplished before we die. From where I’m sitting, life is pretty fucking long. Which I‘m not complaining about the least bit, but just when I think I have life figured out, or like I’ve accomplished what I need to, life turns in the opposite direction and reminds me why it is farmore beautiful than we make it out to be.
It’s funny, so many of us want this perfect life or for things to go the way we want them yet many of us, myself included, don’t realize exactly what our lives would feel and look like if we received everything we desired.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to come to terms with the way my life is at times. Moments where I want things to be different than they are or I want something I don’t have, or when things just aren’t going “my way.” I start thinking about all the ways I could get the things I want. I think about the areas in my life that I think, on a surface level, are lacking in quality. And I’m constantly thinking about how my life and my self could be better.
I realize in these moments I’m not seeing the higher purpose, I’m not seeing the greater path to where I’m heading and by doing this, I’m only creating resistance to the things I desire. I’m so use to wanting to “make things happen” instead of setting intentions to get what I desire and letting things just be as they are until my desire is fulfilled. More and more everyday, I am witnessing proof that this life tool of letting go really works to gain my true desires.
It’s been a little over 4 years since I worked as a Correctional Officer. I worked there for 2 years which may not seem like a lot of time to most. It doesn’t seem very long to me either, which is why I think I drowned out this part of my life for so long. I was 21 when I applied for this job without any prior experience or knowledge of what incarceration life was like “behind bars”. I hadn’t experienced much trauma in the way that jail life presented. I worked in the same county I grew up in so there were a few familiar faces every once in a while. I think this part of the inmate population gave me the belief that I was familiar with that type of population but the reality was that I wasn’t familiar with it.. at all. I wasn’t familiar with the population, the crimes, the behavior, the fowl language, the overstimulation of the environment, the structure within the chain of command, or even how to conduct myself as a professional officer. We had a month long academy but it was mostly classroom work in addition to being instructed to exercise and how to not fuck up or be forgetful in anyway that could cause danger to oneself or another officer. The only part of the academy that even came close to being as much of a shock to my psyche as situational jail life was when I was sprayed with OC and that was just because I had never done any kind of training like that before. And let me tell you, it SUCKED and came as a HUGE shock 😂
For the most part though, almost everything I experienced was new to me and with new experiences comes much needed new ways of coping. Buttttt I wasn’t any good at coping during this time, or maybe I was better than I think since I survived? 😂🤷🏻♀️ who knows. I spent any and every moment of solitude outside of work either working overtime or drinking myself to sleep with friends and coworkers. I realize now it was because my person wasn’t ready to deal with what was happening. My person knew that in order for me to continue my life and continue working in a job I loved, then I’d have to keep going and not have a moment to myself to think otherwise. It wasn’t until after that I realized this, and then spent the next couple years trying to force myself to recover and to cope with the trauma of not only my job but the personal things that were occurring in my life at the time. I had a lot of things happen during my time working with the DOC that it often feels like a much bigger part of my life than it was. The job was where I felt strongest, where I had a voice. It was a place where I had an identity and and felt important when I was losing my identity and importance outside of work in my personal life.
I spent too much time trying to heal from what I thought had become broken. I spent a lot of time trying to maintain the identity I created working there; which I assume was driven by my desire to escape the pain of my personal life. I created a lot of resistance in my life trying to maintain this persona thinking it was who I was when it was not even a fraction of me. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) made its way inside my brain and body and made a comfy little home that I tried one too many times to burn down. Yet, every corner I turned, I was still being faced with the things I couldn’t come to terms with.
I feared people; I felt like someone was always out to do something crazy to me, I constantly criticized myself and told myself I could and would be better, small background noises in the building of my condo would sound much louder and bring me back to moments and I couldn’t understand why they were still in my minds ear. I wouldn’t allow myself to trust anyone including my own family duri this time. I spent a good portion of this time thinking the world was bad and that bad things happen to good people. The more I had these thoughts, the more I closed myself off to everyone and everything.
To some of you, this all probably sounds silly, but when you’ve experienced “normal” human beings (like nurses, public figures, siblings, parents, etc) who do really fucked up stuff to other human beings, you begin to believe that the world isn’t all “sunshine and rainbows” like a 21 year old who was only 2 years out of high school should believe.
This was a mindset I held onto longer than I care to account for or recollect. I’m not sure where it begin, but somewhere along visiting my womb mate in prison, sitting for many, many days in solitude (with an overly obnoxious, anxious voice in my head) and being introduced to meditation and sensory deprivation; I began to realize how silly it is to live in fear. I began to realize how important it is to love yourself and to choose love over fear for personal growth and awakening of a greater self. I learned the importance of letting go and I began to let go of this part of my life.
It sounds much more simple in words than the complexity of how it really manifested in my life, but I just stopped relating any part of my life to this experience. I let go of it completely. It didn’t seem healthy at first, honestly, it didn’t seem like anything other than me ignoring my thoughts and not reacting to them. When something occurred in my life that reminded me of this time in my life, I stopped identifying with it. I didn’t talk about it out loud, I didn’t even bother to think any further than my instant reaction. I just let go completely, over and over again with every situation that presented itself. I didn’t know what I was doing really, I was just tired of working on certain things that never seemed to change or grow lighter. So I basically just said fuck it all and didn’t feed this part of my life any more of my conscious thought or attention. It’s been a while since I began doing that, and to be honest I don’t even remember the exact day I started doing this.
Today I decided to go swimming in my apartment complex Olympic sized pool. It’s on the basement floor level and for some reason I was terrified to go by myself. I just ignored these thoughts and went anyway, blaming them on the antisocial part of me. The pool is heated so there’s a constant noise of air rushing out of a big vent and since the pool is on the ground level of an apartment complex, there is subtle noises all over. As I was swimming, I started hearing these noises. My brain turned them into New Years Eve night on a high profile unit. All I kept hearing was banging on doors, people yelling but it wasn’t clear or constant, it was more muffled and subtle. Consciously I was aware that my mind was identifying the subtle noises of my environment with my subconscious/past experiences. Yet every time I would hear a noise, I’d pop out of the water and my heart would race and bring me back to the loud banging and yelling. It was pretty bizarre and scary as fuck. I told myself to ignore it and I started reciting mantras “I am safe, I am secure, I am well.” In addition to the noise stimulation, I was also reminded of how my body goes into panic mode when my heart level rises which I’ve always assumed is related to the adrenaline rushes of the common high risk situations I was in on the job and the anxiety and challenges I faced during physical training and my personal life. When this happened, I had to quiet my mind by reciting more mantras, “I am strong, I am healthy, I am brave.” I kept challenging myself to not respond to the noises or my fear.
As the hour passed, I realized how I was reacting less and less to the noises and my fear even though they were still there. I decided to put myself in the middle of the pool and floated on my back knowing that if anyone came into the pool, I’d know because I could feel or hear the water move before they could even get to me (crazy, I know). I ended up laying there for a while. I even got to the point where I closed my eyes and did some deep breathing. In this moment I realized I was ready to heal and I was only ready because I spent so much time and energy working towards letting go, instead of holding on and forcing myself to fix it or figure it out.
I’m realizing more and more that healing is the easy part, it’s letting go that is difficult. I think many of us, like myself, spend a lot of time holding onto an identity that once comforted us and helped us survive or made us feel good when something in our lives was too hard to face. This isn’t the only time in my life I’ve held onto an identity. I’ve done it more times than I care to remember (because I realize now that letting go of them is so much better 😏😂).
Letting go is a practice I’ll continue on with as a life practice. It is, in my opinion, a personal journey because when you begin letting go of an identity that no longer serves your highest or present self, others around you have an even harder time letting go of who you once were. We are forever changing though. If you met me back when I was a correctional officer, you’d think the person I am today is an act. Little do you know, I have actually shedded that person and became a more enlightened and loving version of myself.
Most of all though, I no longer believe that good people do bad things. I believe the drive that is behind every human being is the desire for love; to give it, receive it and to be love. Those behind bars may be guilty of some heinous things but that does not make them a bad person or unworthy. Rather, it makes them people who lack proper guidance, self-belief and love, and who lack proper tools of coping with life traumas. Good people don’t do bad things, HURT people do bad things.
This is the reason I have chosen to love unconditionally instead of fearing what is unknown.
By the way, you are an amazing human being. Thank you for listening to my ”voice”. 🤙🏼
🧠 The Cope Dealer
Comments