Description

As soon as the hammer drops that is when it reveals itself to you for the first time. Going through the arrest and county jail and court appearances you've felt anxiety but not the constant and never absent presence of it like it comes when you have been sentenced. Hope of a different outcome is gone now. Once the judge drops the gavel on your conviction a sense of anxiety and threat is from then on all you know. Since my sentencing in 1980 my life has been consumed by anxiety and threat. In prison there is always the looming fog of potential violence and this creates a never-ending static crackling of danger which keeps the fog thick. That never lifts, never fades. It may shift and change shape from time to time, but I am constantly plagued by the pure potential of what surrounds me.

Threats that are uncontrolled peak my anxiety the most. What others may do can consume any peace you might have once you've experienced the extremes men can reach when supervision isn't adequate. I've seen a man decimate his best friend and sit down in his blood and eat a nutty bar waiting for the guards to come take him to seg. Your stay in prison could be extended based on someone else's actions and your need to defend yourself against those actions and realizing that this was the real environment I'd been put in gave me a lot of anxiety.