Bars

I question how much i've learnt in here,
at times i feel like i have progressed a lot as a human being,
confronted a lot of problems that have been dogging me (shut up not funny)
over the years and behavioural patterns that seem to only bring a perpetual cycle of
disapointment and annoyance, i guess each day in here a new conclusion
comes and goes..
 There are good days in here and bad days, i call them funk days,
it'll be a couple of days in a row where you just think everything is fucked,
this will never end and that the world outside is a distant dream that you/i
will never eventually reach. Pushing through this shit, having a little patience,
you get through it in the end. Keeping busy and not having negative conversations
is a pretty good way to start, other than that i guess it's only natural to have these
kind of days, everyday can't be filled with happyness, positivety and hope when
you're waking up, again, in the same place you have been for 18 months and still
have no idea when you'll can come home..
 Despite all the Buddhist texts and self help books i have read during my incarceration,
all of the positive words and self-affirming quotes that i try to surround myself with,
some days my thoughts are so hard to control that i feel like i havn't learnt anything
at all and just got better at bullshitting myself, sounding like i'm this new person who
has left the past behind and is grazing new pastures, in reality i really don't know if
that's the case sometimes.
 I still have anger inside of me. I don't want this to turn to bitterness but it's really hard,
ok i know that this won't last forever and that i'll be returning to a whole new life outside
complete with a new physique and a SHITLOAD of life experience under my belt, so much
so i can't even start to tell you about, but somedays all i can think about is the people who
fucked off and how fucked this situation is, it's like some kind of crazy fucking nightmare
that doesn't happen to real people..at least i thought it didn't anyway.
 Up until recently i used to get really pissed when people would email me or write to me and
tell me about shit they were doing, i'd get pissed reading books about people travelling places
or getting upto interesting shit, i'm being honest, shit would get me mad. I didn't want to
fucking hear about that, i can't do a damn fucking thing, for fuck knows how long, so why
the fuck are you going to tell me about shit that is completely foreign to me? I thought about
it like a millionaire going and slapping a tramp with a wad of cash in the street, or showing
him a photo album of all the properties and prostitutes under his belt, why the fuck would
you want to see that?
 In time though you start to see things a little different,
i used to get all in a funk when i would think about the life i had in Brooklyn, the apartment i
was cotching in, the person i was putting my dick in, an would get angry at the fact that it's
all gone and that i won't ever be able to get that shit back, it's like i had convinced myself that
it was the pinacle of existence, that things don't get better..which when i'm thinking clearly
and realistically is so so stupid. It happens though. Being in such confined spaces and having most
of your senses blocked of any kind of real stimulation, you start to get fried..an one of the biggest
side effects i have had is churning the same thoughts, the what-ifs, should'ves, could'ves,
until it feels like my brain is about to fucking explode..but i guess that's the whole point..
 It was only recently when someone sent me an email talking about some shit back in London
that i actually started to appreciate people telling me what they where doing. I actually started to
understand a little more, my vision got a little broader. Of course these people are not trying or
have any intention of causing me misery or pissing me off, they are just doing what normal people
do, talking about things in their lives that they deem interesting or think that i would enjoy. Again
there is an important word in the last sentance, normal.
 I would get angry sometimes looking at people on tv, watching people act like idiots and do stupid
shit, my reaction to it would be of a very bitter and twisted approach, i would come out with such
lines as "These people don't have a fucking CLUE about real life" and other lines of equal retardation..

 My problem, let me take that back, ONE of my problems,
i forget that i'm looking at the world through MY pair of eyes, i'm making decisions based on MY conscience
and all of these things have been formed by the experiences i have PERSONALLY been through in life and
what i was taught in MY upbringing. Someone brought up an interesting theory to me recently, there is no
'wrong' or 'bad' behaviour in this world, when you think that someone has wronged you or done something
specifically bad towards you, that isn't the case, that if you had experienced everything in their life that
they had been through up until that point, you would make the exact same decision. Interesting. I'm unsure
if i completely agree with that as it, in my view, simply gives people a 'get out of jail' (how ironic) card for
whenever they do anything fucked up, which isn't right. I don't know, i found what he said interesting so
i thought i'd share it with you, translate it how you will.
 As far as me getting pissed at shit, like i said, i forget that i have my own viewpoint of the world. In a moment
of common sense it's obvious to me that people who have lived a 9-5 life and have had steady tax paying jobs
all their lives, live in the same place they were brought up and do everything as they were told to do in school are
obviously NOT going to see life the same way as me, they have a different paradigm (i think that's the right word)
than me and to assume anything different is a fruitless use of my mind and emotions. Seems obvious but i still
have trouble with it sometimes, like i said, some days are easy and some are not so easy.
 Despite all of the time spent in here,
there is still a part of me that is angry and i don't know when that will subside, if ever, it seems likely
that in the future due to me being outside (FINALLY) and having all the options in the world at my fingertips
that i will be able to let this all go, up until then i really don't know. I'm pissed at what these people did to me
and while i'm still held in here while others are and not, i feel it's only natural for me to be pissed. Maybe i'm
just having problems still letting go of attachments to the fantasy-like existence i thought i was living, i really
don't know..i just know that some days i feel like a new person who has moved onto a standard of living way
higher than i achieved in the street, other days i just feel like i'm rotting away in here and my mind is the
slowly starting to go down the toilet..but again..i guess that's the whole point..
 The good thing though is when you have break-through moments, like when i read this certain email recently,
hearing about all this good shit that was happening out there suddenly didn't piss me off or make me feel like
i was having shit slapped in my face, it actually made me optimistic. It was a reminder of exactly how much
is out there in the world and how stupid i was for glorifying a life that really was far, FAR from ideal. It was a
fun life, but one that eventually was going to end in some kind of explosive disaster..now when i hear from people
i talk to in different places, when they tell me about the new places they have visited, the shit they get upto,
it's cool..

Just don't over do it.