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Hi all. I have not posted much of late, but wanted you to all know I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done for me. My wife and I cried together last night in awe of the love we have seen here.
I have a proper thread in mind to thank you all, this isn't it :) but I was reading DU this morning and as usual all you all got me to thinking about something, and that led to insight, to learning, and I wanted to share it with other so people might better understand a few things.
Seen more then a few threads where prison was mentioned, or jail, what have you - I have been reading DU for some time and the posts have run the gamut: "I hope X suffers in Prison", "Life term is better, they will suffer more", "Our prisons are akin to torture", "too many people in prison", "I hope someone becomes someone else's toy in prison" - and well, you get the idea.
We have a lot of varying opinions on the whole thing, but I think there is something we come together somewhat on deeper in to it all. (please bear with me as I have slept but a few hours in many days)
I chose this topic (jail) as I used to work in one, and it seems a fitting analogy. I use myself here as I know me better then others :)
I have been in my own mental prison for years. A lot of years. One where torture was routine, but then so was joy oddly enough. It is like the Stockholm syndrome where you become sympathetic to your own self in some strange way. You hold your joy hostage to your pain, your hope to your fears.
In some ways, we want ourselves to suffer for the things we have done wrong. In other ways we want compassion and guidance over punishment. We seek forgiveness for our own perceived sins against ourselves and others, beg for leniency, and yet another part of us calls for a long sentence. It is a completely contained system of justice within ourselves. We are prosecutor and defense attorney at the same time.
Part of this is just normal really, we all do something like this to some small extent. It becomes, IMHO, a mental illness (like with me) when somewhere deep inside it goes too far. Some want to mete out the death penalty (suicide) while others just want to see themselves suffer in a small mental cell. They don't really WANT that for anyone, but a sense of justice takes over and convinces you that someone needs to suffer painfully for the things they did - and when you are looking at your own life, you choose yourself.
I was a damned good prosecutor of myself. And now, I am working on being a defender. With the Love I have seen here on DU, I am finally seeing parole for my soul and mind.
And yet, so many in life will not understand this. "Just quit doing it, tell yourself it's ok and move on, be strong, turn it off, etc and blah blah blah."
So I came up with this experiment for people to examine. Even if you can't try it for yourself, you can easily examine the results.
Make a video of yourself discussing something emotional to you. Then maybe go for a drive and video tape what you see.
Now, get drunker than hell.
Repeat the video. But don't drive of course.
Note your difference of reaction, how you talk, how you cannot drive.
And as yourself - WHY?
Chemical changes. Your brain is not functioning as it normally would. Now imagine having a mental illness where this is on and off no matter if you are drinking or not, IE - it just happens without warning. You ramp up from sober to drunk and back down again without being able to control it.
That is what many go through each day. And yes there is help - but so often there is not always understanding and love.
And that brings me back to our prison threads and criminals.
We often show anger and hatred at the actions of others, and this can be understandable certainly. But deep down in all of us is someone waiting to be loved and forgiven, to have others help lead them from the darkness of a place their mind has created for them. People give up on themselves, then on others, and wander from goodness into a place of dark selfishness and end up doing terrible things to others.
Can we lead them out via bars and suffering in dark cells? Or do we hold for them the same desire to punish them as we have done ourselves - through mental anguish.
I am not excusing the criminal here, but hoping we can glean something into the mind of those who do harm others and hope to lessen it over time - instead of helping to perpetuate it by making them more of what they were to start with. Just because we see the external deeds of someone it does mean we understand the internal issues which led to it, and sometimes I wonder if we want to or if we just want to ignore the issues we cannot see. "I made the right choices, you should have too" does not always work when one person is "mentally drunk" and someone else is not.
I get the Amish people a bit more now.
Maybe we forgive others more when we have learned to forgive ourselves. Maybe when we have walked in the shoes of someone who has been ill we start to understand better and forgive more, and want help instead of hurt and the 'teaching of a lesson'.
I have made poor decisions in my life, I have done things which have hurt others, and some have done the same to me. I don't want a life sentence of pain and derision, anymore than you probably do. Suffering multiplies like rabbits - and the more we wish it on others, the more it grows until it consumes us and we become not so unlike those we want to see suffer.
Forgive yourself. Defend yourself. Note where you were wrong, and apologize and forgive.
I built my own Alcatraz over the years, and I am finally in a raft escaping it. I did a million good things in this life for others, but the few negative things I felt I did gave me a life sentence.
Don't do this to yourself. Solitary confinement you build yourself is hell. You only get to see those you love through the bars you forged - and you won't experience the freedom to love them if you don't break out.
Sorry if this made little sense. I am happy today for once in a really long while, and sleep is little. I have hope again, and I just want to revel in a bit just in case my parole is revoked and I find myself back in that prison I built. But I won't go easy this time - my little girl needs me to fight, and in part thanks to you all and your care I am going to.
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