VT incarcerated women write – WRITING INSIDE VT

credit: margaret gunning

The following writing really speaks for itself. This woman arrived at group noticeably agitated. It wasn’t at all clear that she would be able to settle into her writing. And yet, she not only found words to channel and name her state of mind; she also was able, in the course of the brief writing, to gain clarity and understanding into her own behavior pattern:

I feel hurt and violated and when I am backed into a corner, then I act like a rabid polar bear. My instinct is to hurt back and lash out and make you feel the same way. I am rabid because my beliefs and values are not being met; and rabid is how off and unexpected I can be.

Then I rant and roar like a bear. I start clawing at you and want to rip you apart, limb from limb, until you breathe no more. Then you can’t violate or hurt me anymore.

I will always take care of me and sometimes, I am ashamed of how I do it. I am used to manipulation and violence as a way of getting what I want. But now that I am clean, I realize that people aren’t listening to me. They just fear me.

So I am trying to be constructively angry so that I can be heard and also help others to be heard and respected as well. It’s a slow process because of 41 years of the same old comfortable ways; but I will learn a new way. My bear won’t be clawing, rabid and scary. It will be soft and cuddly but firm and strong.

credit: theonlyfanever

Last night we wrote to a variety of prompts suggested by the opening poem, “Oniomania” by Peter Pereira (see “Prompt of the Week” page for full text and prompts.) One of the lines reads, ‘what could be so wrong with a little indulgence?‘ Inside prison, it quickly becomes clear that many poems – such as this one about filling one’s hunger with shopping in the absence of love – carry multiple and very different meanings to women whose lives have been significantly altered by drugs.

I post these two writings together because they address indulgence from two different perspectives. Yet both these women are equally struggling to fight their addiction, to find alternate ways to ‘indulge’ themselves in healthier, more constructive ways.

A LITTLE INDULGENCE

A little indulgence is all I need. To indulge in that next high. That fix. It meant everything. Even now, it’s still there, lingering in the very depths of my core. I still want, still crave. It’s my addiction. My ‘Higher Power.” I can’t fathom my life without that high. I have to now, though, ‘cause I’m isolated from what I want. I need to indulge in other things. Something glorious that doesn’t consume me. I want/need to indulge myself in change and not dwell in the past; but grasp onto reality and say, “GOOD RIDDANCE” to that high … –CC

A LITTLE INDULGENCE

Is such a thing possible? When behind these walls, with so little to call our own, it seems like that would be no problem at all. I tell myself that getting by with the basics of life is all that I need . . . I don’t need that new car, the latest electronics, or to redecorate my home. What I have is just fine. In reality, these materials things that I consume myself with the need to possess, mean nothing in the end.

Without the ability to focus on such things, the need to have them feels like nonsense compared to what actually is needed. What could ever compare to . . . the smile on your child’s face? the love from family and friends? the freedom to just be you? These amazing things taken for granted are missed the most when you are behind these walls. –SC