Jesus Viramontes, December 2011- January 2012

December 30, 2011

Another year gone. Damn, I can’t believe that I’ve been locked up for 12 years now. I hate the idea that I’ve been gone that long. I could never see myself being locked up longer than 10 years and the realization of actually having to serve the whole 20 year sentence is scary. Of course I’ll deal with it, just like I have everything else in life. I am a survivor after all.

I just need to set my goals for the next 8 years. Now that’s the hard part. I have to keep my mind occupied. Yet I have no idea what to do next. What can I do to better myself? I’ve always kept a positive outlook on this experience, but it gets harder every day that goes by.

The hardest thing is that my mom keeps getting worse and worse health-wise. There’s nothing I can do but offer words that comfort her, yet the idea of me being locked up brings tremendous stress to her. I know I’ll deal with all this, there’s no question about that. It’s going through the motions and dealing with it that kills me. If Life was only easier to deal with… but then I guess it wouldn’t be exciting.

January 10, 2012

Irony is something else. Today as I was going to breakfast (we have to walk outside to go eat) I was ordered by Captain Putrick to take my hood off. Every winter they issue us jackets with hoods, but the unit policy is that one cannot wear a hood. Anyways, the irony was that it was so cold out that even the captain had a beanie on, yet he was telling us to take our hoods off. I guess he probably thought we were immune to the cold or something. In prison, it’s do as I say, not as I do.

Another crazy policy is that we cannot put our hands in our jacket pockets. It’s natural for us to try to keep warm by putting our hands in our pockets, right? Here’s the funny part though—usually it’s a guard wearing winter gloves that’s ordering you to take your hands out of your pockets. Man, I love prison! I know these guards aren’t highly trained and I believe this is a big factor that contributes to the negative environment in prison.

This place has changed me into a cold person. There’s no emotion in this place. Well actually, yeah, there’s plenty of hate, too much racism, and even me, I’m guilty at times for being like that. I try not to be like that though, it’s not my intention, but I do get caught up with my environment sometimes.

I always have my guard up, that’s always my mentality. I’m not used to expressing kindness of love, whichever term you want to use. I’m not used to being touched or hugged. I’ve been thinking like this for 12 years and now it’s ingrained in my mind. Yeah, I know it’s a fucked up way to think, and I realize it, but I can’t change, not now, maybe once I’m out. The good thing now is that it’s downhill from now on.