MyTimeToBlog
When you're incarcerated, you gotta find something to make you smile. No matter how bad the day has gone, you can find this moment of joy, and invest your time in it. I didn't recognize how much I needed a place of peace because I went about it wrong at first.
You see I found drugs as an escape. I'm talking about the kind that numbed the world around me. I did this so much that I became addicted to those temporary outlets. The worst time arrived when I ingested a drug that balanced another man's equilibrium. My world tilted, and for hours I'm leaning like Michael Jackson in the Smooth Criminal video.
That was me thinking this was fun. Instead, I'm on my bunk, nauseated like a week's ride on a rollercoaster. Sadly, I didn't stop, because I couldn't find something to put a smile on my face.
I traveled through one prison after the next, trying this and that, bringing myself deeper into the gloom. I had friends down there, who supported my trek, simply because I shared my so-called joy with them. One of them found me looking for a smile and he suggested heroin. I took to that like a new Marvel movie; I'm happy. That nonsense dragged me into a pit, gladiator fighting myself to an early death.
When you're young, broken, and can't think, you take on problems you think aren't that. One day at work I had a horrible experience, hoping for a smile. Instead, I'm taking a knee--for an hour in pain. That smile was replaced with misery. The kind that had me running away from that insanity.
Nobody can teach you life when you're unable to listen. I only heard the cries of my existence spilling down my cheek. No sermon from a faith leader could puncture my clogged ears. All I could hear was that I'm happy on a record that skipped over the rest of the song: how I'm happy in hell is a mirage. I heard what I wanted.
I'm walking amongst the worst of the worst, smiling through a fabrication I concocted from falsehoods. This crap tore me apart, and I constantly invested in it, over and over.
What changed me was finding myself at the rope's end. I'm over the edge of a fifty-story skyscraper, realizing I'm about to die. I slithered atop that roof, on my back, huffing and puffing. Exhausted. No hand reached down to pull me back to my feet. I just lied there, crying.
Nobody knows the hell you've made but you. I lied there, having a moment of clarity. I was sober, somber, and in need of help. Since those around me fueled my so-called joy, I couldn't turn to them. So, for the first time in my life, I headed to mental health. I wanted answers as to why am I making myself believe in my falsehood. The tears poured, and my comrades watched them as a therapist gave me a seed: find your footing in prison. Simple for those who know what makes them. Me, I'm a thirty-year-old who can argue you down about why Marvel Comics was better than DC Comics. That was who I was. This brought on so many new thoughts because I had nothing to look back on; misery was back the other way, so I had to pave a new path ahead.
Have you ever stared at the world around you and said I can't be here. This isn't me. Well, I did, and that's when the work came. I dismantled my entire world by tossing that thinking away that said drugs were your joyful place. What I did was sit in my cell and start making a list of what I loved that made me smile.
It went from movies, walks in the park, reading a comic book, to eating a pack of M&Ms. I also made a negative list that was destroying my world. That list was vast, shocking, and an eye-opener. When I studied both, I noticed that all I carried with me was childish nonsense from a fabricated existence that the same confused men I associated with dwelled amongst. That's when I started educating myself on my value: a billionaire mindset.
I learned that as any with this mindset, you gotta prove it. So, I collapsed the foundation of my world and hired a new architect. One who had his/her head on straight, then started working. By the time I reached the rooftop of my new kingdom, I was able to prop my feet up and eat a watermelon sour gummi.
I stopped with the who is me, cry me a river craze. I'm a clear-minded thinker who can do what I want. My life is mine, so I never touched those so-called joyful moments again. Now I'm sitting in prison working on proving I'm a billionaire mindset. And as I do, I smile, thinking about that watermelon sour gummi on my rooftop. My outlook on my life is vibrant, with no mute colors, nor those that darken my outlook on life.
Have you had to deal with a so-called joyful moment? When you have seen what it wasn't, how did you change it to something better?