About 2009 things at home really got bad because my mothers cancer treatment wasn’t going good and she was slowly wasting away from the chemotherapy. right before i was arrested she was trying to pursue a political career and it actually looked promising. unfortunately the act that i had committed killed any chance at this just for her being my mother. another fact that weighs on me every day. the guilt of ruining her chances at what was amounting to her life goal has sat on my shoulders for all this time and when i heard this from her own mouth that no one wanted anything to do with her because of the nature of my crime made feel even more low. her health was steadily on the decline and soon she was being taken care of by hospice workers at her home on the reservation. she spent as much time with my son as she could and i heard that she was doing all she can to make sure everything she thought needed taking care of was done before she passed on. i called her as much as possible until the fateful day when she was on so much morphine she couldn’t even talk. they pressed the phone to her ear and i talked to her the whole fifteen minutes allowed on the institution phone call. my aunt said she could hear me and called my name through the fog of drug when the phone ended. it was the last time i ever got to say anything to my mother.
the next day i was called to the chaplains office and given an emergency phone call home. i called my mothers home phone and one of my aunts answered delivering the news. there is no way to describe the shock of knowing the finality of the situation that the only one who was caring for me through letters and answering the phone and sending me money was no longer in this world. that the person i cared for more than anything for all my life was now gone. she stood by me and carried me through the worse moments in my life and never stopped loving and caring for me to the day she died. i truly believed that i was now alone against the world. something broke inside of me and i stopped feeling anything that could be called compassion or caring. i talked to my aunt for awhile and when the call ended i went back to my cell. no one ever knew the pain i was in because in prison no one really cares for anyone else except themselves. my eyes were opened to the fact that now my time would be a struggle against not only the inmates that wished me dead but against the demons that lived inside of me.
it was at this moment that i knew my life could go down a path that would define me for the rest of my life. i could live completely absorbed with the whole prison world and ignore the outside. i could choose to become the scum of the earth everyone was telling me that i was and live up to the expectations of sinking into degradation. or i could make a vow to do something that would give my life meaning. i think it was fate that i had just met a month earlier some guys who were willing to teach me Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and not care how i came to be in prison but only that i was willing to learn the knowledge they had to pass on. so as i lay in bed at night deciding whether i should give in to the self hatred and let my self go down to the bottom of life destroying any chance i had at redemption, or not, i made a vow. i vowed to devote the rest of my life to learning the martial art of BJJ in honor of my mother because i she would not have me waste away in prison, a loss never to be recovered. i vowed to gain as much skill and technical knowledge to truly call what i did an art form. not to be a badass but to be able to pass this on to future generations as it had been for hundreds of years by those nameless monks in bygone ages. i would do this and it would give my life meaning.
that’s how i saw it anyways and i began to train seriously with the others every day after the noon meal for three hours and then skip the evening meal training for two to three more hours at least six days a week. i did this for approximately 18 months.
i stopped caring about prison politics and whether or not i should risk my life and safety over idiotic things like tv’s and tables or whether or not someone had the right to walk the yard because their background. i even stepped away from the sweat lodge because at the USP facility i guess the other felt the need to hold meetings about who would be let join the ceremony instead of welcoming everyone as it was in Colorado. there was a new caste of inmates who would go and they did not feel the need to hold the place sacred or have any sort of respect for the holiness in which it represented. it was instead treated as a place to gather and smoke tobacco even taking the tobacco back to the unit to sell for stamps or commissary. so when i voiced my opinion that all such acts should cease taking place i was out voted to let them continue. i left because i did feel the same connection as i had before when everyone was going with the right intentions.
i did run into some individuals who knew me from the newspapers. one such person came to my room with a home made knife taped to his hand early in the morning right when they popped the doors open. my cell mate had just left the unit for work and i was lazing about in my top bunk bed when i heard the door open. i put on my glasses and saw him standing there fully khakied and armed. he said “explain yourself to me why i shouldn’t kill you right now. explain yourself, explain yourself.” he kept repeating that and i opened my mouth to speak but i don’t remember what i was going to say because he rushed towards me trying to stab at my legs. i bunched my legs up and gathered my blanket into a ball throwing it at him as i jumped off the bunk. his knife got tangled up in the blanket and i grabbed him pushing him to the ground and started punching him in the face as hard as i could until he lost consciousness. when i looked up i saw one of his homies looking into the door window. he came in and i was getting myself ready for another fight when he told me that his homie wanted to do what he did and they had a meeting about it the night before to let him come after me. since he lost the fight they would make sure he would go to the SHU and not come out and i would not have to worry about him anymore. when he came to he left the unit and never came back. as far as i know nobody except me and three other inmates knew that that had taken place. we kept it this way because we were different races and we did not want a race war. had i been stabbed and possibly killed that morning it was going to be explained as an unknown incidence they had no idea about that the guy was operating alone without their knowledge to prevent a race riot between them and the natives.
the second time i had a fight it was with a 55 year old man who was bipolar and hyperactive. he did at least 3000 burpees every day. three thousand burpees. he got mad at me because we had a difference in opinions of a move i cant even remember now. i thought it was a friendly debate but he took it as serious argument and followed me to my room from the day room table when i went to use the bathroom. i rushed inside and slammed the door shut trying to grab ahold of me. luckily i had been training for about 8 months with the fellas in BJJ and Judo and threw him to the ground. he immediately grabbed onto my leg and started trying to bite my calf. i held onto him as best i could and started to pound on his face even then he was trying to bite my hand every time i punched him. i didn’t hear the door open and his people came in and pulled him off of me telling him to calm down and snap out of it. apparently he had already done this a number of times and they were used of pulling him off of people. i was grateful for their rescue because i was quickly losing stamina against him. he apologized later and we became good acquaintances.
i also had to clear up an issue with another inmate who was going around spreading rumors that i was a child molester. i went to the Aryan Brothers of Texas and produced my judgement commitment papers that says my charge is 2nd degree murder. they showed it to him and told him to stop talking behind my back and if he had a problem i would agree to a one on one fight, which he refused.
after all these things we started getting put on lockdown a lot because the SMU programs in Florence Colorado and Pollock Louisiana were put into place which meant that the population of these USP facilities were decreased, the inmates sent to Beaumont USP. this changed things on how the yard politics operated because now we had two different mentalities entering into the third. currently everyone was pretty chill because the inmates were mostly medium classification. now we had inmates from two of the most violent prisons in the U.S. showing up. things quickly devolved into a bloody mess of random acts of violence. riots started over simple misunderstandings. t.v.’s, tables and areas in the chow hall were being fought over by these new inmates who felt they had to establish their own territory. all this meant was i had fewer hours to train in BJJ with my buddies.
so i found a few like minded guys in the unit to train with and quickly started them on the basics. now it was mostly in our housing units in which we lived were we did most of our time because the recreation yard was always shut down due to fighting. this continued for about 6 months until one day i was called to the office by the lieutenant on duty, told to secure my locker, grab my I.D. and come with him. i told my homies that i was being called out and they all thought it was a random urine analyses. so i did so. i left a full bowl of nachos on my locker and walked out the front door. as we were towards the holding cell in the captains office the lieutenant turned to me and said i wasn’t a killer no more that i was a cupcake. he said my points dropped form medium to low security earlier that day and i couldn’t be on the compound because it would be a lawsuit if i got hurt so they were putting me in the SHU to await transfer to the low fci next to in the morning. stopped and looked around wondering if i would every see the people that i had come to call friends ever again. then i remembered that there are no true friends in prison only people who can use you for their benefit and i shook my head and continued walking. i went through intake and was put into a cell by myself. it was the most peaceful nights sleep i had in a long time.
the next day i was taken out and transferred to the low and experienced a culture shock. i didn’t realize how much i had changed.
