An Airplane That Never Lands
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Being in prison is like being dead. Nothing matters. People fall out of your life; the world passes you by and forgets about you. You become a ghost haunting the walls of a house you don’t have any more.
It is like taking a trip on an airplane that never lands, perpetually soaring above all the flyover states. No stops, no connections, no destination, and after a while you cannot remember where you came from or where you are going. Time has stolen all the crucial waypoints and markers from your life and you have become empty.
And it hurts every day. Every time I sit down to tasteless, tepid prison fare in unpleasant company, it hurts. Every day I cannot touch or play with my children and watch them grow, it hurts. Every night I go to bed alone, it hurts. Every day that I cannot go to work and build my life, or take a walk in the woods or ride my bike or go camping or rafting or do some other thing I love, I suffer.
Vast stretches of galloping boredom are punctuated by shocking eruptions of hate and violence—and that’s all there is. Prison takes everything there is to being human away from you and replaces it with rabid tedium. It makes the very measure and essence of your life—time—your mortal enemy.
What prison has given me is hope for when I get out. When I am free, unless someone I love gets hurt, it will be impossible for me to have a bad day. If I get the flu… I don’t have the flu in a cage. If I somehow lose my wallet… I get to go to the store and buy a new one. If I am some day in a hurry to get somewhere and my truck has a flat tire as it runs out of gas in a rainstorm in the middle of nowhere—what a blessing compared to the view I have right now that is crowded by bars, a wall topped by razor wire and a gun tower.
- An Airplane That Never Lands - January 1, 2019
