It is another day I can open my eyes and continue celebrating the goals I am achieving. I am blessed with another day, although I am limited to what I can do or even read, I continue to find the best each day and be thankful. I am thankful that I can log into the edovo platform and learn all I can before I return to prison. This has been a helpful tool in visualizing my long-term goals. There are times I think of my purpose in life, then I hear people tell me because they see what I’m doing that I motivate them to do better. That feeling is unexplainable.
Incarcerated by Fernando Cordova (6-7-24)
Incarceration is always associated with jails and prisons. Yet how many live incarcerated in the free world? How many people that are incarcerated become free? By many, incarceration is viewed as a form of punishment, yet for many of the incarcerated it is freedom, I personally know both sides of the coin.
As a youth, I was incarcerated before I even knew the meaning of the word. I watched up close and personal the effects of alcohol and drugs destroy the man I saw as my hero. I saw my father’s metamorphosis from a loving father to an abusive husband. In order not to become a slave to this violence I ran from it. I helped a man on his ice cream truck at a very young age. Not knowing that a deviant mind sat in this man’s head. My first encounter with anything sexual was from this man. He attempted to force my hand on his groin area. This changed me and incarcerated my mind. I saw violence as a way to release this demon that haunted me. This led me to another deviant person, yet this was a friend of the family. The sexual assaults I endured at the hands of this person led me to search for an escape.
I found it in incarceration. I finally found a place that I would not be hurt anymore. Although there was violence all around me I felt at peace. I was finally free from it all, not knowing I only was suppressing all my demons. When released from the juvenile center I was placed in, I became all the more violent because I knew I had a safe haven to go to. Never once did I think of incarceration as a bad place or punishment. It was my escape.
Incarceration was a place that I could be free, but in reality I never was. It led me exactly to become the man I dreaded. A person with a twisted sense of reality, an overinflated ego, and an excuse for every wrong I ever committed, or would commit. I continued this life believing that as long as I suppressed those demons I was liberated not incarcerated. I became a shadow of the man I truly was deep down inside, I used drugs and alcohol to hide from all I did not want to face. Now I was searching for a different escape.
In conclusion, whether we are incarcerated physically or mentally, we must search for a positive escape. We can all find it, yet we must be willing to be honest with ourselves. Let not those things define us, but let those things be our strength. Thank God that he placed the right person in my life. I have held what I have written above for over forty years. If I can find the escape, so can we all. Let’s help one another to find the escape.
