True growth does not come from the outside but from within; something truer has never been spoken.
As I sat here looking at the murky grey wall in my cell, I wondered who I was. I felt lost. “How does a person grow into the person he is supposed to become?” I wondered. I had no clue. Growing up in prison, I was consumed with false beliefs about who I was or would ever be. To make matters worse, the heat in my cell did nothing but increase my agitation over the fact that I was now in my thirties, yet mentally, part of the 15-year-old boy who first came to prison lived on. I kept him alive by holding on to the beliefs I held to be true from my childhood. The boy I was is one of the reasons I am in this suffocating cell in the first place. I was impulsive, angry, and I lacked any emotional intelligence, so why keep him alive? Well, the beliefs I came in with made me me, or so I thought. I believed that holding on to this piece of me made me “real,” whatever that means. Then it hit me. I started sweating. I didn’t know if I was sweating from the heat in my cell that’s only slightly bigger than a mop room or from realizing that the only way I could truly experience growth was to eradicate that boy who lives on in me. Change how I viewed the world, what I value, and live for something more than just my own selfish wants and needs. In this moment, in a cell so hot that the simple strain of thinking too hard will cause me to perspire, is how I took my first steps into true adulthood. Growth is defined as the stage in the process of growing; something that grows or has grown. As I read these words, I ask myself, “Have I grown?” If I had asked this question to 15-year-old me, I would have answered, “I’m a grown ass man!” Clearly an answer that most immature teens would have given, thinking growing older will solve all of life’s problems. True growth does not come from the outside but from within; something truer has never been spoken.
