By David Joseph Meister
[Shared here with his permission.]
Prison tries to tell you who you are. From the moment you are processed in, you are given a number, a uniform, a set of rules, and the subtle message that your identity is now property of the state. For many men, that message takes root.
I have seen two types of prisoners in my decades here. The first group surrenders completely. Their experience is shaped entirely by others: the guards who bark orders, the administrators who cut programs, the clock that drags them from count to chow to lockdown. They go where they are told, do what they are told, and eventually stop imagining anything beyond these fences. They are alive, but not really living.
The second group chooses a different path. They recognize that while the system can confine your body, it cannot touch your inner world unless you let it. These men take ownership of their time. They read, write, paint, study, exercise, pray, or simply reflect. They refuse to hand over their minds. As I once put it to a friend: “Confinement does not have to define who you are. Your actions shape how others treat you. Your mindset shapes how you see yourself.”
I know what it is like to teeter between the two. There are days when the weight of this place feels like it is pressing the air out of my lungs. It would be easier to give up, to let the bitterness rot me from the inside out. But I also know that when I choose otherwise, when I pour my energy into creating something or into understanding myself a little better, I feel free, even in here.
That choice is available to every person who wakes up behind these walls. And it is a choice that matters, not just for us, but for the world we will eventually reenter. Because men who let prison strip them of purpose often leave here broken. Men who hold onto their agency, even in the smallest ways, are the ones who still have something to offer when they walk out.
The walls are real. The time is real. But so is the freedom you claim inside yourself. The state can take years of your life, but it cannot take your mind unless you hand it over.
For more of my essays and artwork, visit MeisterArchive.com.