Essay from a friend in the slam

I recieved this essay from a friend of one of my friend who is in jail, it's a little dramatic in places but well written. He asked that i post it in as many places as i could think of. In all honesty this place seems like the most appropriate. Enjoy, and feel free to leave comments, I think that was the whole point. :thumbsup:

Maybe it's because I have spent my twentythird, twentyfourth, and am anticipating my twentyfifth birthday consecutively incarcerated, but getting out is not something I've put alot of thought into. It seems so. . . False, distant, I'm not sure. I guess it's gotten to the point at which it just plain seems too good to be possible.
I want to have space to run. I want the privacy of not having to see or even hear another person or any human activity at all for just one hour. I want to be able to listen to any music at all. I want to be able to eat healthy, and to have psycholigically healthy lifestyles and environments as options or possibilities. I want to be able to touch another human being affectionately without it being construed as a sign of aggression or homosexuality. I never suspected that under three grahms of methamphetamine could take all those thing away for three years, or that such sanctions would be condoned by the government.
I feel like i am confined to my own personal sarcophagus with bearly enough room to breathe the stagnant, oxygen deprived air. I feel like a zombie, dead, a slave to death and it's limitations. I feel subhuman, less than alive. my soul is suffering from claustrophobia and it is painful and terrifying in ways that physical pain and fear are incapable of creating or comprehending. Sorrow, apathy, anguish, death, depression, worthlessness, futility; those are all pieces of the horror that I have been forced to accept as a part of my every day life, pieces of the nameless feeling that is incessantly hanging on to me, dragging me down further still.
It is a great big unspoken "fuck you" hiding behind a phony, compasionate smile. The obseqious smile is the established precepts and precedents defining cruel and unusual punishment according to our "merciful, compassionate and humane" justice system. I didn't realize that a thing which inspires the desire for your own death was humane. I must be behind the times. Were it not for the permanence of death and the temporariness of incarceratin it would be a no-brainer. I am living the most existensionally cruel AND unusual punishment devised by man thoughout recorded history. Give me lashes, the stocks or physical torture any day. Give me something to fight for or look forward to, something to live for that I might have a reason for a tomorrow.
It is impossible to discover what the self needs next in life if one is unable to move progressively onward, beyond where the self is now. It is impossible when one is surrounded by intrusive persons, and coercively forced to "progress" on generic terms established by the state. If one can not progress subjectively all is meaningless, life ceases. There is no such thing as an effective "one size fits all" psychology therapy or program. This is the increasingly not-so-unusual nature of my dilema and the cruel natur of my lawfully imposed circumstances.
Incarceration beyond a certain subjective duration ceases to accomplish anything resembling progress, and only serves to be intensionally harsh and cruel, especially in instances of "victimless" crimes. The true victim of a victimless crime is not the state or the taxpayer, they voluntarily provide for the punishment of the perpetrators of victimless crimes. The true victim is the perpetrator themselves, both because of their self-destructive behavior and doubly so for the punitive measures imposed on them for their violations of needless laws.
What is the purpose of funding additional punishment for those who have already placed themselves in hell? What is the point of Right to Life if one is not allowed to live both their own pleasures and their pains? Aren't we responsible for our own happiness? If so, why does the state feel that it should be responsible for our misery? How can people not see the cruel and unusual nature of such policies and laws?
Only the self-righteous, the hypocritical, the morally corrupt and blind, uneducated zealots could rationalize and justify such unabashedly biggoted policies and ideas.
It is painfull to see so great a nation and so great a people treat human beings, mush less it's own citizens and family members, in such a lowly and dismissive way. It beed elitism, seperation of classes and castes, and supiriority issues. It breeds a cancerous form of inequality, and both civil and social disenfranchisement. It needs to end.


(Note to any moderators if this is in the wrong forum please move it to a more appropriate one. Thanks.)