So today I have a much better idea of who I was, who I am today and the man I want to be tomorrow. And for the first time in my life I believe that I have something positive to contribute to this world.
In 1994 the Federal Bureau of Prisons opened its most advanced supermax prison, its mission statement is to house the Bureau’s most infamous criminals, gang members, drug kingpins and terrorists and limit their ability to communicate with each other, as well as with the outside world. ADX, as it is known, is a high tech fortress, like a citadel in a sci-fi movie. Built outside a small town in Florence, Colorado, it is a world unto itself, far beyond what you could imagine.
My arrival here is the most memorable moment in my life. Walking down its long hallways the only sounds you can hear are the opening and closing of the grill gates and the leg irons on your ankles scraping on the tile floor. The thing that will stand out in my mind is its almost complete and total silence – it is eerie. In fact, if silence were a sound the noise in that place would have been deafening.
But it was inside those cells where the real darkness existed. Life in that place was every bit like living within a concrete tomb. It was simply existing. A place where time had no meaning. What day, month or year it was became irrelevant as everyday was no different than any other. Yesterday was no different than today and today no different than tomorrow. Probably for the first 15 or so years I could see no way out of there and believed its where I would die. In the end, I spent nearly two and a half decades there.
ADX was a lonely place. There was no one to talk to, to touch, or to hold. It was there I began to ask myself what the real meaning to life was? Was this all there was? Over time your mind begins to drift and you visit some of the darkest recesses of your mind. Many there eventually fell off into a dark abyss haunted by their own demons. Many may never come back to reality and are only shells of who they once were. Or worse, they are now monsters, angry and bitter and seeking vengeance on anyone that crosses their path.
Everyone struggles there at some point, myself included. But once I learned to embrace the solitude that became my life there I was able to find a kind of freedom to look inward and really get to know myself. Oddly, I finally got to know myself really well. So today I have a much better idea of who I was, who I am today and the man I want to be tomorrow. And for the first time in my life I believe that I have something positive to contribute to this world.
