My name is Roy. I live in a high security prison in New Mexico. Inside here, I'm known as "Red" because I have red hair. Well, it used to be red. Now it's mostly yellow and white. I've been inside for 8 years now and I'm 57 years old. I'll never get out of here alive because I got a twenty year sentence and I contracted hepatitis-C from dirty needles.

Our internet access is very limited and supervised. I had to get permission to post this. I don't want you to think that influenced what I am going to say. But I want to be honest. Some things about prison life I had to cut out. My story was written over a couple of days after reading about your verbatim project.

When I was younger I had a lot of anger inside of me. I sometimes think I was born with it. I used to hurt animals and was always getting into fights. Eventually I started breaking into people's houses and trashing everything inside. I was lucky that I never got caught. Sometimes I would find money or something I could sell and that made it easy for me to buy drugs and alcohol.

The drugs really didn't do it for me but the alcohol did. My favorite drink was blackberry brandy. You could probably float a small ship on all the blackberry brandy that I have drank in my life. And when I was drunk I felt like nothing bad could happen to me and it made me do even more break ins.

One time I broke into this woman's house and really trashed the place. It was not a fancy house and was full of cheap stuff. I read in the newspaper that the woman came home from work and found her house trashed and then tried to kill herself. I really didn't want to know too much but there was a story about a month later. The woman had no family and so some of her neighbors got together and bought her new furniture and TV and she was recovering pretty well. When I read about this it made me angry for some reason.

A couple of months later, when I was drunk again, I decided to break into her house again and trash everything. I felt angry about the help that she got for some reason. This time I set a fire in her bedroom. It didn't burn the house down but it made the house uninhabitable. I read the newspaper the next day and found out that the woman was found burned under her bed. She had been hiding there when I broke in to her house.

Some neighbors saw me leaving after I set the fire. I was arrested and found guilty and sent here. I'm telling you this because I want you to know that I felt bad about what I did and that I more or less deserve to be here. But there's more to it.

Inside prison you have a concentration of evil people. Everyone here has made mistakes and wrong decisions and they do not change much when they are here. Every day someone is trying to hurt another inmate and you eventually get used to this empty pain right above your belly button that is what fear feels like. There are fights and threats all the time. But that's not what makes prison life a living hell. At least for me, it was knowing what I did.

You have lots of time to think about your life before you got to prison. That's the real punishment. Lots of guys here have done horrible things and they know it. They hate themselves and actually seek out punishment as a way of doing penance.

I remember I had many weeks of nightmares about that woman I killed. She was a frail woman and she worked at a nursing home. People who knew her said she was kind and loving, but lonely. That hurt me because I was lonely too. I sometimes fantasized that instead of burning her house I might have made friends with her and we could have helped eachother. These are crazy dreams that I had.

To feel better, I dared to look at one guy here who was a gang member. I know it sounds crazy on the outside but here, if you look at someone in a certain way, you will get punished. I got beat up pretty good. My face was blue and my eyes were all red when he finished. But inside I felt better because I had been punished.

I think that there is only one way out for people like me and that is to forgive yourself. I think that sometimes people are born or grow up and learn to hate themselves because they are unloved and alone. They need to be punished. Sometimes the bad things that people do are because they cannot love themselves.

Inside here there are a few individuals that people leave alone -- even protect. They are not the biggest or toughest guys. In fact, some are old and frail, like I will be someday soon. But they have something special and that is they respect themselves. You tell they are different by how they take care of their cell, their clothes and their cleanliness. People talk to them when they have problems and these special people always have time to listen and give advice. They are people who have done some really bad things before they got inside, but they have forgiven themselves.

So I am writing this because I want people to know that your worst enemy in life is your own self. If you cannot love yourself, faults and all, then you are doomed to a life of anger and you might end up in a place like this. You do not have to believe in a God, although that helps sometimes, but you have to believe that your life has meaning.

For me, I have learned that my life has a purpose and that is to make me realize that I can forgive myself for what I have done. I know I made many mistakes and hurt many people with my anger. I cannot change the past. But I see now that this had to happen to me to make me change. I know that the woman I killed would forgive me if she knew that it changed my life. I want to believe that so much.

So, for people on the outside, please look in your heart and ask yourself if there is something that you have done that you cannot forgive? If so, try to understand that this will continue to make your life a hell until you defuse the bomb. Respect yourself and you will respect others. Forgive yourself and you will forgive others. Whatever the future holds for all of us, face it with self-respect and forgiveness.

Tell us your story from the heart. Tell us if you are ready for something new, something real.

Gary Vey / editor / (reply to: myristicin - at - hotmail - dot - com)

COMMENTS:

Dear Mate in the Prison of Unforgiveness

The only difference with you and us who seem to be outside is that the bars of your prison are visible, they are real, when ours are mostly invisible. We can still believe that we are free, that we do not carry unresolved anger or hatred, that we are OK. Only because all of our own stuff has not yet become visible. We all live in the same prison with you, in the prison of our mind, until the day that we can forgive ourselves for what we have done to ourself. Your story is our story, we are all in it together.

K.R.

In his essay entitled De Profundis, Oscar Wilde wrote of life in prison as incredibly demeaning and without love. It was there that he really realized what hell on earth was: a place without the beauty of nature, the song of birds, the sight of flowers blossoming. Prison is not at all a place for healing. It is a sort of hell, a dungeon where angry impulses are nurtured and encouraged. It was in that lifeless place that he met with sorrow more intensely then anywhere else in his life. I find it quite amazing that you have found it within yourself to forgive yourself for your horrible deed. Also, as dire a place as prison is, it gives us the opportunity to create a garden within, wherein we may cultivate our hearts. I find it impressive the way you describe those people who have self respect in prison; that those are the people that other inmates leave alone. Maybe it is their inner strength that creates an outer shield. I think that clearly, you are also one of those 'wiser' inmates whom others may come to respect in due time. Such people are rare on the outside too! Infact, when I encounter a wise person, my heart bleeds and, filled with light, I feel to do little more then bask in it fully while shedding tears of tremendous joy at such a rare encounter. Thank you for sharing your story and I wish you all the wonders of healing that our bodies and minds and hearts are capable of.

L.R.