BREAKING THROUGH

WEEK 5: I am starting to feel an easy familiarity with the prison. The TV room is like any living room, men lounging around talking, doing crafts. I lean over the table, watching Alberto make his beautiful owls, made from tiny pieces of folded recycled paper. "When are you going to make me one?" He looks slyly down, and apologizes. "I'm getting out tomorrow." "Oh." I gulp back my disappointment. Somehow I'm not prepared for this. "But won't you miss it here?" One of his grizzled companions turned to me, with a sardonic look on his face and said, "You've got to be kdding us! What do you think, that this is a vacation?" I look guiltily around and realize I have no idea what it's like to be confined. Manuel is in our MINDFULLNESS group, and comes faithfully every day. He always sits politely to my right, staring at the screen of the TV blankly. He is in his late 30´s, has never uttered a word, and usually it takes a moment for him to register what I say. (I have a thick foriegn accent in Spanish, which I imagine sounds very funny to them....kind of like a funny eastern European Meryl Streep accent.) Today at the end of the group I could tell he was gathering his thoughts. I knew that he liked our mindfull walking meditation, which we often finished with. I waited a moment, and he said, "I had a pass to go home last weekend. I was with my kids, and I realized I wasn't listening to a word they said. I WASN'T PRESENT. I was worrying so much about them in my head, I couldn't even see them in front of me. I had to walk out in the street to clear my thoughts. It upset me. Is that normal?"