Allowed to Run

“How old are you?” Matt asked me, as we idly waited in the bright sunshine outside our housing unit for in-line.

“I’ll be sixty in a few months,” I answered casually while thinking about my nearly four decades in custody.

“Sixty is a good age.”

“Why would you say that?”

“When you’re sixty,” Matt said with a flashing smile, “you no longer have to fight. You’re allowed to run.”

Laughing while the housing unit door opened, I went to shower. While under the pelting water, I reflected that there was really no place to run my first eighteen years in custody warehoused on San Quentin’s Death Row awaiting execution, nor was that my inclination. I had pretty much embodied walking/talking hate and had picked up a couple of Assaults On Inmates]. Thinking I had coped with harsh circumstances in the only way possible, I was angry that I had been sentenced to death when, in my mind, my double murder was only my attempt to stay alive, survive.

My first nine years in custody, I continued to chase chemical bliss; my daily focus was trying to find and ingest drugs or alcohol. When I broke my right hand on another prisoner’s head during a drug deal gone bad, I landed in the hole and knew that concussing the yard drug dealer was not a great career move. Thinking this might be my last poor decision in a lifetime full of them, I decided to stop drinking and drugging. This was not a lifelong resolution, but simply what I thought I needed to do to manage the dangers that lay ahead. If and when I worked my way off the yard hit list, I fully planned on going back to mind-altering substances.

A funny thing happened to me between sobriety in order to survive my latest act of violence and my intended drug-fueled, faded future: I found I had a small talent for writing and started selling my thoughts to newspapers and magazines. I understood that at a molecular level that my gift was miniscule, so I would not be able to write while inebriated. I clung to sobriety not because I thought it appropriate, but simply so I could write and make a bit of filthy lucre.

Years passed, and my sobriety allowed me to start thinking a bit differently about the events that had led me to prison. Going through two trials had given me access to police and investigator reports, and I started to understand the lives of my two murder victims. The more I understood them, the more sympathy I had for them, and almost against my will, empathy crept in.

When I transferred to Sierra Conservation Center in Jamestown, the captain told me at my initial classification that this was a self-help facility and added that he wanted me to complete at least one self-help group each quarter or I could not remain at his prison. If I did not have completion chronos and certificates in my file at my next annual, I would be transferred.

I had worked for custody at my last prison for many years, rising to become the captain’s clerk, and I arrogantly thought if this captain couldn’t see that I was an asset to his facility, he was blind and not worth my time. I did not need any more improvement and had no intention of going to any self-help groups.

I was assigned to work in the California Prison Industry Authority fabrics shop sewing clothes for Caltrans and CAL FIRE. The work was really interesting and paid more than twice as much as I had received as the captain’s clerk.

When I was ducated to the sixteen-week Anxiety/Depression class. I attended reluctantly but went because I liked the facility and sewing and did not want to transfer. The first two classes were mind numbing, I stared at the clock for the hour while trying to block out three prisoners taking all the oxygen from the room. The three just talked and talked and talked about their wants, their needs, and I wanted to be anywhere else in the world. Everything changed in the third class, the three guys who had dominated everything were gone and the rest of us who had been entirely silent, started slowly participating. By the final week we had bonded, gaining trust in each other as we learned the elements of cognitive behavioral therapy. We learned how people, places, and events trigger memories of past experiences which lead us into depression or destructive acts including violence. We learned about identifying triggers and how to use coping techniques to deal with stressors. My last day of class, I told the facilitator that I almost quit the class after the initial sessions, but I was glad that I had continued. He told me it’s always the same: the first few classes a few prisoners want the focus to be on them, but when they don’t receive the praise and approval they crave, they stop coming and then the class has a chance to bond and move forward.

With this positive experience, I attended Coping, Anger Management, and Celebrate Recovery. I discovered in Celebrate Recovery that it had almost been a miracle that I had not relapsed. I had not in a meaningful sense embraced sobriety or formed any sort of strategy or plan to stay sober.

I recognized that in the past when people spoke to me without consideration, I would become coldly angry and start planning vengeance. There was no way they were going to treat me like I was a punk. I learned through more cognitive behavioral therapy how to identify right away when my thoughts were going dark, and then I learned to talk to the problem person in an assertive, clear way communicating my need for them to speak with me in a non-threatening manner. I found one of the best responses when a prisoner would say something disrespectful: ¨Can you explain why you would say that to me?” Often, when they started to explain their words, they would realize how crazy their message, back off, rephrase, and we could then move forward in a positive manner.

Sobriety was a tremendous gift, it allowed me to think clearly and allowed me to write for publication. Cognitive behavioral therapy was an amazing way to learn how to view events, and find appropriate and peaceful responses and solutions to stressful situations. A coping technique might be as simple as walking away, lending yourself time and space away from the trigger.

By far, the most important lesson I learned was about forgiveness. I learned to forgive people that trespassed against me. You can’t forgive anyone in a meaningful sense until you have a bit of understanding why they are violating your boundaries, and it’s absolutely true that to understand all is to forgive all. Forgiveness is really not about them, it’s about me. When I forgive them, I remove my negative emotion, anger, and the need to seek revenge. I’m able to center myself and move on positively with my life.

Recently, I wrote remorse letters to my victims as part of a restorative justice process of making amends. I wrote to the two people that I had murdered, and I communicated about all the things I had learned about their lives, all the events in their pasts that had led them to act in the manner they had toward me. I tried to put into perspective how their past had led them into the confrontation with me. As I was rereading the letters, it struck me that I needed to forgive them. I’m alive and they are dead at my hands, so it’s counterintuitive to forgive them, but I did forgive them and felt a great deal of emotional release, and the residual anger ebbed away as I fully embraced that the harsh circumstances that I thought justified murder were simply excuses and not reasons. I had acted with evil and without conscience. I had not acted as a human being, but as an animal fueled by fear and anger. The burden, the blame for the act of murder lay not with them but only within me.

Thinking back to our conversation, I feel grateful to Matt that he gave me, in my golden years, permission to run, but I think that it’s time that I stopped running and started confronting and working on the issues that dictated my actions, so many of which I had taken without thought or conscience for most of my years, when I fell to earth more than six decades ago.

About Allowed to Run – Author’s Notes

“You should do a deep dive into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”, said a friend, after reading Allowed to Run.

Tilting my head, thinking it over, I replied, “I think someone who’s really studied the subject, someone with credentials should do that. I’m just a criminal grappling with life.”

“The therapy has done a lot for you,” he persisted. “I think people would like to know how you approach your everyday. You might help someone.”

“Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has helped a lot, but I also do additional things to work on myself.”

“Write about all of it.”

Pondering the concept for a couple days, it occurred that every unrepentant felon develops a shallow, sophist philosophy they’re eager to release like plague from Pandora’s Box. So, in that tradition I thought I’d scribble a bit of nonsense.

Although it may sound insignificant when it comes to leading a more tranquil life, the first thing I do, six days a week, is cardio exercise. I have found that cardio makes me feel calm and lends me a sense of euphoria that I previously was only able to achieve through drugs or alcohol. Monday through Saturdays, I do forty minutes running in place in my cell with my ear buds rocking a deep beat. My philosophy is it’s okay to stop the exercise if I feel ill or I’m injured, but even then, I must try, I must begin, even if I stop only minutes or even seconds after starting. Often, I doubt I’ll be able to complete the exercise, but once I begin, I start the mantra of one more minute and then another and another and usually finish. Even when I had Covid-19, I only missed four days and was back at it. This is the opposite of impulsive, instant gratification that previously defined my existence. This is day after day perseverance that lends me self-worth, confidence, and a sense of accomplishment.

When the cardio is over, I slip onto my bunk to cool down and spend some minutes in an ersatz meditation session. I go over the twelve steps program, recite the Serenity Prayer, read scripture, centering myself for another day behind bars. Frequently, I study Cognitive Behavioral Therapy workbooks put out by Hazelden, learning how events trigger thoughts which lead to feelings and behavior which can be destructive. The workbooks teach me to reach for alternative thoughts and behaviors which have the potential to lead to positive, socially acceptable, and non-violent outcomes.

As I referred to in Allowed to Run, two of my demons are drugs and alcohol. At least for me, abstaining is relatively easy. All you have to do is find a routine that takes their place. The cardio, twelve steps, meditation, the study of scripture, give me good feelings that I don’t have to seek in substances. I’ve been clean since 1991 without relapse. Clarity of thought has been a tremendous gift, which I value and hold close.

Another much more difficult demon I contend with is opportunistic or criminal thinking, finding a way to go through each day in an ethical manner without taking shortcuts or doing something simply because it’s expedient. This seems easier in practice than it is in reality at least for me. An example is a day I went to the library after work and then wanted to return to my housing unit when there wasn’t an in-line. The control booth officer asked me where I was coming from. If I told him work, I could go in and shower. If I told him the library, I’d have to wait for the in-line and might not have the opportunity to shower. This might seem an insignificant lie, but it’s not to me when my entire life has been defined by opportunistic behavior full of minimizing and rationalizations that helped lead me straight to San Quentin’s Death Row for eighteen years. Small, seemingly insignificant lies lead to larger ones in a slippery slope kind of way. In truth, I struggle with doing the right thing, fail, and try again and again. I often try to resolve these issues by simply explaining my dilemma to the person in authority, asking for guidance, but that has had mixed results and I`m still working on a way to cope with these situations in an ethical manner.

A third demon is my temper. When I feel I’ve been disrespected, I have often in the past employed self-destructive behavior to prove I’m not a punk. I want to project that I’m not weak, and I’m entirely willing to rain pain upon anyone who trespasses against me. Not long ago, a coworker slapped the headphones off my head, enraged because he thought someone was trying to steal something from his desk and believed I should be guarding his belongings. The event led to my thought that he thinks I’m weak and can be bullied which generated a feeling of anger and I found myself falling into the familiar pattern of behavior, plotting retribution. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy allowed me to recognize that l had been triggered. Just the recognition allowed my mind to start contemplating rational, alternative thoughts. Why did he believe I should be guarding his belongings? If I act out emotionally, what will be the consequences and how much will it personally cost me? These thoughts led me to choose an alternative behavior. I took him aside and said in a clear, assertive manner, that I did not have an obligation to secure his possessions. Even if I did have that responsibility, my failure to fulfill my duty does not give him the right to physically engage me. My coworker tried to focus on the potential that he might lose his belongings, but I refused to be diverted and kept the focus on his violation of my right not to have headphones slapped off my head.After a few attempts at evasion, he finally acknowledged that he had acted impulsively and apologized. I accepted his apology without any reservations, and we moved onto his concerns and peacefully worked out the rest of his issues. I feel we now have a stronger relationship with better communication, enhanced mutual respect due in no small part to the lessons and tools of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

One of my major coping strategies is forgiveness. I have found a huge benefit when l forgive those who trespass against me. Once I understand the other person’s motivations, even when his actions are inappropriate, I can generally find a way to forgive them. Forgiveness lets the emotion fall away, and I’m able to move on absent the vitriol of vengeance spinning through my head, engulfing my heart and being, dictating my actions in a negative, often violent manner. I have also found that when I grapple with ethical dilemmas that are not clear to me and I fail, forgiveness of myself is a way to move on from angst and learn from my mistake and experience personal growth. If you can’t forgive yourself, you have more trouble acknowledging errors. You find yourself locked in place, emotionally wrapped, and paralyzed by all your misunderstandings and missteps.

Finally, I often hear people working on their recovery and trying to improve their lives referring to boundaries which includes staying away from certain people, places, or things. I prefer not to worry about where I should not tread, I think about discovering the path I want to follow, the process that I want to engage that will hopefully lead me into enlightenment and wisdom, a healthier, happier existence.