Help Eugene Fulfill His Dreams Outside of Prison
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Eugene Ivey is rejoining society after almost 27 years in prison.
He spent close to half of that time — nearly 13 years — in solitary confinement. Notwithstanding conditions of imprisonment that should be outlawed in any civilized country, Eugene not only managed to survive but to develop his intellect, character, and spirit. Eugene was saved by his mind, by his resilience, and by a remarkable bond with his best friend from childhood, who was locked up with him for years.
Eugene can live an exceptional second act, but he needs and deserves our support.
Eugene was just 17 years old when he was imprisoned. He had already survived a traumatic childhood marked by poverty, violence, and tragedy. As a result, Eugene made some grave mistakes that harmed others. And for these mistakes, he holds himself accountable.
Today, Eugene is a bright light and an inspiration. He deserves to fulfill his dream of completing his bachelor’s degree and working on social policy and community development. While Eugene was a student in the Tufts University Prison Initiative of Tisch College, one of his professors wrote of him:
You have demonstrated intelligence and eloquence, coupled with a level of sensitivity and generosity that I don’t see in very many people anywhere, and all of these qualities combine to make you not only an excellent student but a deeply engaged and productive community member capable of cultivating and sustaining complex relationships.
At the age of 44, Eugene is leaving prison and starting a life on parole with no financial resources. He is a hard worker and will, as he says, “grind it out,” taking any job he can find. But we owe Eugene more than that.
We want to help Eugene realize his dream of obtaining his bachelor’s degree, but to do so we must give him the financial foothold he needs to begin working toward this goal.
Despite the suffering he endured over decades of incarceration, including years in solitary confinement, Eugene has — quite miraculously — maintained both his sanity and his hope. And yet, as he says: “I haven’t lived yet. I’ve survived. I’ve never truly lived. I want to live.”
Please help Eugene turn his hope to truly live into reality.
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To learn about Eugene's story in his own words, written in 2019, keep reading:
Copyright 2019 Eugene Ivey
My Story
By Eugene Ivey
I was born in Los Angeles, California in 1977. I am the only child from my parents’ union, the youngest of my mother’s three children, and the middle of my father’s three children. Shortly after I was born, my mother took me and my brothers back to Boston. Both of my parents struggled with drugs and alcohol throughout their lives.
My father was absent my entire life until the day he passed away from AIDS. The few times I met him, he was either high on drugs or pissy drunk. This only added to the anger I felt for him not playing a role in my life like my brothers’ father. Although my stepfather was not together with my mom, he was present in my brothers’ lives, as well as mine. He treated me like I was one of his own children. I remember when he would take me along with my brothers and their siblings on fishing, bowling, roller-skating, and swimming excursions. These were some of the happiest and fondest moments of my ephemeral childhood.
I was raised by my mother, who was tasked with raising three boys on her own. It wasn’t easy on her, nor my brothers and me. We endured many hardships from being poor. Some days were made longer from my hunger pains and some nights colder from not having enough heat. Despite the adversities, we made it through as best we could. My mother was a fighter. All 130 pounds of her. She didn’t complain or make any excuses when times got hard. If she got knocked down, she would get right back up and fight harder. She worked numerous jobs, legal and illegal, to make sure my brothers and I didn’t want for naught. Her tenacity and resilience were remarkable.
During the good times, my mother would take us to the old Boston Garden to watch WWF wrestling matches. We once saw the wrestler “Andre the Giant” at a pawn shop; pawning our valuables was commonplace in our struggle to survive the hard times we regularly encountered. Another time we went to see “Disney on Ice.” I remember it being cold and the toy flashlight that was shaped like an ice cream cone with a swirling red light atop it.
We moved around a lot, but Roxbury is where everything originates. This is where my story begins. I grew up getting picked on because I was small in stature, had crooked teeth, and was “too black.” I remember being six or seven years old and confused by these vitriolic sentiments being hurled at me by other black kids. This caused a lot of anger in me. It was years later that I began to understand this self-hatred and its sickness.
One time in particular, when I was around eight years old, I had gotten into a fight with a kid from the neighborhood. I came out of it with a slight lump under my eye. When my mother came home from work later that day, I immediately began crying and sniffling with snot running down my nose, trying to explain to her what had occurred with the other boy. She told me to stop crying and, without mincing words, that the next day after school she would be waiting for me at the bus stop, and as soon as the boy and I got off the bus, I was to whoop his ass or get my ass whooped by her. She further told me to “never allow anyone to put their hands on you” and “do whatever you have to do to protect yourself.”
Knowing I couldn’t come home and express my true feelings and emotions, I began to bottle them up along with the frustration and anger I felt towards my mother for not hearing me. I’m sure in her rationale, she was doing the right thing in teaching me to physically fight and not show weakness or hurt emotions. Raising three boys in one of the toughest neighborhoods as a single mother would make her tough lessons seem justifiable. But these tough lessons, beatings with switches (small tree branches) and belts, only served to cause me to become angry and aggressive. And so, at the slightest provocation, my anger and frustration would come uncorked, followed by physical violence. This behavior affected my schooling tremendously, resulting in two expulsions while in the third and fourth grades. I was sent to see a psychiatrist, but I was recalcitrant. The only thing I learned from the doctor was how to play dominoes. I saw him a handful of times.
Despite my anger and frustration at my mother, I loved her dearly; we were extremely close. She was everything and more to me. I trusted her with my life implicitly. I was her “road dawg” (sidekick); she took me everywhere with her. We held the inseparability of conjoined twins. On one occasion, she took me with her to an illegal gambling parlor. When we arrived, she knocked on the door and, moments later, I heard the door unlock from the inside. The door opened slowly and there stood looming in the doorway a tall giant of a man holding a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun. I was scared, but my mother didn’t blink at the sight of the gun. She and the man exchanged pleasantries and then we were let inside. This is how we rolled. Another time, she brought me to a bar where I witnessed her bust a man over the head with a big glass bottle. In my eight-year-old eyes, my mother could do no wrong.
Then came the move to Trenton, New Jersey in ’86. We lived there up until the end of ’89. It is here that I stepped off the front porch and began to venture into the street life. I admired and looked up to my oldest brother, Chris. I thought he was so cool. I used to try to follow him around, but he wouldn’t let me hang around him. Occasionally, he would beat me up and send me home. However, I was persistent. I played with a few kids my age, but it was the older kids who hustled, sold drugs, and had all the girls, that intrigued me.
I began hanging out with the older kids, skipping school, smoking cigarettes and weed, drinking, and learning about the drug trade; crack cocaine had invaded the inner cities around this time. My mother allowed me to hang out with these older guys involved with the drug trade without consequences. As long as they brought me home unscathed, she didn’t have a problem with them keeping me out late or overnight. On one occasion, when I was around 12 years old, she and I transported drugs together from New York to New Jersey for some of those same guys. This was the normalcy of dysfunction in my life. When I think about it now, I can’t help but feel appalled by it all. And it begs the question from me: What was my mother thinking in exposing me to such dangerous and destructive behavior?
Before I knew it, we were on the move again. Moving around from place to place seemed to be the story of my life. We moved back to Massachusetts; this time we ended up in Brockton instead of Boston. The chaos and dysfunction that enveloped our family ripped us apart. We were constantly fighting amongst ourselves; my mother began using drugs and drinking alcohol more frequently to cope with having AIDS (unbeknownst to me), and I fell into the street life. Taking what I learned in New Jersey, I started selling drugs and trying to make a name for myself in the streets among my peers. I wanted to be the biggest and toughest Gangster.
Then I learned that my mother was dying of AIDS. Walking home from school one day, I had an uneasy feeling; something in the air seemed different. I couldn’t quite pinpoint it, but the sting in my gut told me something wasn’t right. I continued to trudge along until I made it to the lip of the driveway that abutted the house in which my family and I lived. It was a lime green, two story home that was converted into two apartments. We lived on the second floor. (I always thought it was funny that we lived in a house that looked like a sour green apple and which sat on a street named “Appleton.”) I made my way up the narrow driveway and the staircase leading to the apartment. I opened the door to utter silence. Now the stinging in my gut began to burn. I sat my book bag down and made my way to the front of the house. I found my grandmother and oldest brother, Chris, sitting in the living room. The TV was on, but there wasn’t any sound coming from it. The far-out expression on their faces alarmed me. I asked my Nana what was wrong. And she told me to sit down. I knew immediately something was wrong, but I couldn’t anticipate what I was about to hear. My Nana said, “It’s your mother, she has AIDS!” Everything ceased to exist for me in that moment. I sat there on the sofa, paralyzed from the shock of her words. I couldn’t move nor speak. I just stared straight ahead at the living room wall. It was all so surreal.
Hearing that my mother had AIDS meant to me that my own life was over, that my mother would die. This was a concept I couldn’t quite fathom. A part of me was in denial that any of this was true. When I returned back to the present, I asked what hospital my mother was in and immediately left to see her. I climbed on my dirt bike and cried on my way to the hospital. My tears flowed and blew into the air as the cold crisp wind hit my face. The pain and hurt was unbearable. I made it to the hospital as fast as I could and when I walked in her room, I saw the woman I loved so dearly and believed was indestructible, lying there, looking so weak and fragile; my heart sank. I made a beeline to her and we hugged each other tightly and cried for a while. There were no words to say in that moment.
It was extremely hard for me to accept the fact that my mother was dying. I did what I always did with my feelings: I bottled them up and immersed myself further into the streets. I had a warped sense of manhood, as do many young black kids whose only male role models are the gangsters, thugs, and drug dealers in the neighborhood. I thought being a “man” was being tough (“feared”), having a lot of money, sleeping with many women, not snitching, and being able to do a bid. Those were the “Rites of Passage” I naively subscribed to and believed would make me a man. I executed those rites with robotic precision, devoid of all emotions. I was determined to ascend to the top of the echelon of street thugs, hustlers, and gangsters. I sold drugs with not an ounce of compunction about how or who they may harm. My only concern was generating money to benefit me, my family, and friends. However, I didn’t last long in the drug game. After I was arrested the first time for drugs, more arrests for drugs and other unsavory acts quickly followed.
I was cast into the Department of Youth Services (DYS). My first stint was brief, but memorable for two reasons. First, the director, Kathleen Carter, was very kind to me. When I was released, she still tried to keep me out of the streets by driving (along with her husband) through the places where I used to hang out. I remember running and hiding until they would drive by. I couldn’t appreciate her kindness and generosity then as I do now. Nonetheless, she left an impression that has stayed with me over the last 28 years. My second most memorable moment is of me being restrained by a male staff member after another kid and I had an altercation. He was a big kid and I was a runt. He beat me up, wounding my pride. I was mad and proceeded to struggle even after we separated. Before I knew it, I was on the ground on my stomach in a variation of a hogtie. My arms were behind my back, cuffed at the wrists with my legs bent backwards through the cuffs. I cried for my mother and pleaded with them to release me from the position because the cuffs hurt and were cutting my wrists. I stayed like that for about 15 to 20 minutes. I already had trepidation concerning law enforcement, so this only served to deepen the anger and distrust I had for male authority. My first bad experience with law enforcement took place during an arrest for drugs when I was 13 years old. I was handcuffed to a railing in the Brockton Police Department when the arresting officer and I had an unpleasant exchange of words. He responded by smacking me in the face with an open palm.
My initial stay in DYS did nothing to change my behavior for the positive. It was merely a notch under my belt, boosting my status in the “’Hood.” When I was released, I dived right back into the same dysfunction as if I had never gone away. Then, a few days after my release, my oldest brother, Chris, with whom I had a sometimes-volatile relationship, but who I loved and looked up to, was arrested on murder charges. For me, this was a very traumatic experience. All I could think of was losing him for the rest of my life on top of my mother’s impending death. Chris was the second most important person to me and now he was also being taken away. I felt hopeless. I didn’t even process the fact that someone lost his life. I couldn’t see beyond my family. My thinking then was that if you were a part of the street life, you were somehow deserving of whatever befell you.
Several months after my brother’s arrest, I was arrested myself and committed to DYS again. My mother came to visit me and did not look good. I was deeply saddened and depressed by this. I remember hugging and crying together before she left. It would be the last time I would see her alive; she died a few months later, on February 9, 1992. I was 14 years old and still in DYS. I was allowed to attend her funeral. Seeing her lying in the casket brought me tremendous sadness and embarrassment. I was embarrassed and ashamed because I had to attend her funeral in waist chains and shackles. Sitting there, I felt like a leper. I was so overcome with emotions. I became enraged at myself and those around me.
My mother’s death rocked me to the core. I carried around a lot of anger about her death for a long period of time. I felt hollow inside, like a scooped-out pumpkin. I never felt so alone in my life. In response, I did what I always did with my primary emotions when confronted with a traumatic situation; I masked them with anger. I found myself more easily agitated, which led to more altercations with other kids in DYS and more restraints by staff. I was emotionally immature and believed that by being rebellious, I was staying true to myself and my distorted morals. (Years later, when I was able to accept that my mother was gone and let go of all the anger, I was able to grieve properly. Today, she still lives on in spirit, a spirit that gives me strength and propels me forward in life.)
Not long after my mother died, my girlfriend, Alexandra was supposed to visit me at DYS with her older sister, Gina, because Alexandra was too young to visit without a guardian. Unbeknownst to me, her mother, Joanne, wanted to know who her daughter was so adamant about going to see, so she accompanied Alexandra to the visit instead of Gina. As I made my way into the visiting room, I noticed Alexandra sitting there with an older lady. I immediately thought, “I’m in trouble!” I knew it was her mother. After slight hesitation, I made my way over and sat in between them. I was as nervous as a kid on the first day of school. I said hello to Alexandra, then introduced myself to Joanne. Her first question was, “What are you locked up for?” I proceeded to answer her question, then went on to tell her everything about myself and my life. Surprisingly, she took my hand and held it the entire visit. Reminding me of my mother, she made me feel loved. I was so profoundly moved by her kindness. From that point on, I sent her greeting cards for her birthday and the holidays.
Eventually, I was released from DYS to my grandmother’s custody. She lived in a senior citizens residence. While there, I enrolled in Brockton High school. I momentarily tried to do better for myself, but after a month or two of living with my grandmother, she told me I couldn’t stay with her because Housing wouldn’t allow it. I felt like she didn’t love me like she loved my brothers. I was uprooted again; it was the story of my life.
Homeless, I slept on friends’ couches and went back to selling drugs to feed myself. Then one day while speaking on the phone with Alexandra, her mother told her to ask me if I wanted to go to dinner. I hadn’t spoken to Joanne since we met during the DYS visit. I accepted the invitation. The following day, Joanne, her husband, Jack, and Alexandra picked me up for dinner. We ate at Phillips Steakhouse in Boston. While talking, Joanne explicitly told me that if I get rearrested, I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with Alexandra any longer. I completely understood her concerns for her daughter. I told her as much and thanked her for the lovely dinner. I was arrested two days later on drug charges. I wrote Joanne a lengthy letter thanking her again for dinner and apologizing for disappointing her. Without my knowledge, she called DYS to find out my whereabouts. From that point on, she became a mainstay in my life, ultimately adopting me when I was 16 years old.
I went to live with Joanne, Jack, and Alexandra in Weymouth after my release from DYS in August 1994. I was excited by the prospect of a new beginning. I enrolled in Weymouth High School at the 11th grade level. I made some friends and got a job at D’Angelo’s sub shop after school. On the weekdays, I would go to school, work, and hang out with my new friends playing video games, basketball, and attending football games. And on the weekends, I would travel to Brockton to see my grandmother and some old friends. Here I was in a loving home and peaceful, stable environment, but I was struggling internally. I was so accustomed to chaos and dysfunction that I felt out of place, like I didn’t belong in my new surroundings. A battle began to rage in me. A battle of whether I should stay with my new life or return to my old life. In the end, I chose my former life, the life that I always knew.
I sat down with Joanne and had a long talk about things. She asked me why I wanted to go back to the streets, stating that she didn’t want that for me, but wouldn’t stop me from leaving. I didn’t give it any real thought. My only reasoning was that I had to be out in the streets. (Over the years, as I have reflected on my illogical decision, I can’t help but think that there was some mental health element in play, like Stockholm Syndrome. The streets were my captor and I the victim.) Joanne told me that if I left, I would get locked up. Her intuition came to fruition a day and a half later. I was arrested again and charged with first degree murder.
During the early morning hours of November 2, 1994, I was driving with a friend in Brockton when we encountered “Monsta.” He flagged us down. I rolled down my window to see what he wanted. Monsta greeted us and then proceeded to say that dudes on a porch nearby – and one guy in particular – claimed the area was their spot and that he couldn’t sell drugs there. Monsta said he wanted to fight the guy.
I had met Monsta a year prior. We weren’t friends, merely familiar with each other. I told Monsta to chill out, that we would be back in a minute. There were several people on the porch looking at us. I wasn’t sure if any of them had guns on them, so we drove off to see if we could find a gun for ourselves.
We ended up pulling into a driveway where Monsta was waiting for us. I told him we were looking for a gun but couldn’t find one, and that I thought these dudes might have a weapon. I didn’t want to approach them without having one ourselves. My friend interjected that he may be able to get his hands on a gun. He left and returned a few minutes later with a revolver. I took the gun from him.
I told Monsta that we would all go confront the guys on the porch to make sure that Monsta was able to get a fair one-on-one fight. We stood on the sidewalk looking up at the porch, where a group of about five individuals stood looking down at us. We asked the group who was messing with our boy, Monsta, telling him that he couldn’t sell drugs there.
No one on the porch said anything. Monsta pointed at one guy, saying it was him, and then said something to him in Creole. After their exchange, I said to the group that if no one wanted to fight Monsta, then they all needed to “run their pockets” (i.e., give me their valuables). This was a spontaneous comment, as I did not go there with the intention of robbing anyone. Again, no one said anything. I reached into the hoodie I was wearing and pulled out the gun, pointing it towards the group and saying, “You think I’m playing?” As soon as those words came out of my mouth, Monsta grabbed the gun and said, “I’ll show you how it’s done.” He then proceeded to shoot the gun until it was empty. His intended target was the guy he had a beef with, but that guy had already begun sliding closer to and inside the entranceway, avoiding being struck by a bullet.
I was momentarily stunned by the gunshots and the screaming I heard coming from the man who had been shot and was now laying in the entranceway. It was dark and I couldn’t see where he’d been hit. I was incredulous; I couldn’t believe Monsta just shot this person. As I came back to the present, incredulity turned to fear. We ran, jumped in the car, and drove to a friend’s house where we stayed the night.
The next morning, Monsta and I went to my grandmother’s house, where we called a taxi. As we left, the police pulled the taxi over at gunpoint. Monsta and I were taken to the police station, questioned, and placed under arrest.
I faced the ultimate penalty for my crime: life in prison. At Plymouth County Correctional Facility, where I was held pretrial, I erected a tough guy facade, but internally I was nothing more than a scared little boy. At booking, I was screaming in my head, “I’m just a kid, I’m only 17 years old!” But I knew my silent cries didn’t matter. I was placed in a dorm room with about sixty hardened criminals and one CO to supervise everyone. I was scared. All I could think about were the stories I’d heard about people being assaulted and raped in prison. I didn’t show my fear because I knew that any sign of it would bring the wolves out from where they lurked. My mother’s voice rang loud: “Don’t let anyone place their hands on you, do whatever you have to do!”
After I moved into a regular unit with my best friend, Erick, he broke down the dos and don’ts, allaying my fears. My only accomplishment at Plymouth, for which I was very proud, was earning my GED. Other than that, my stay at Plymouth was nothing more than a rerun of the time I spent in DYS. Most of the fights I had were due to my feeling like I was being singled out because I was small. I didn’t seek out problems, nor did I shy away from them. I was prone to anger, so I reacted violently when faced with a threat. My mentality was you either swim with the sharks or you drown. I swam with the sharks because I refused to be someone’s prey.
Joanne supported me through my stay at Plymouth. Her love never wavered. We didn’t discuss the case too often, but I remember her asking me during one of our conversations if I did it. I told her no, because at that time I believed that I was not responsible for the man’s death since I did not pull the trigger nor intend for him to be killed. Over the years since, I processed how my actions caused the man’s death and came to understand that if not for my decisions, he would not have died that night. But back then, in the lead up to the trial, I denied any wrongdoing.
I went to trial with my codefendant, Monsta. After the trial quickly ended in a mistrial, I reluctantly pled guilty to second degree murder, which would give me the possibility of parole after 15 years. I was alone in the courtroom when I pled. Joanne arrived after the plea was over. She was disappointed and hurt, as we had agreed that I would stand trial. But, again, she vowed her love and support. Pleading guilty and accepting a life sentence, even with the possibility of parole after 15 years, was surreal to me. “This can’t be happening,” I thought to myself. But it did happen. I was sent to MCI-Concord for processing that same day.
Monsta decided to proceed to trial again after the mistrial. With all of the witnesses against him, I thought for certain he would be found guilty. A few days later, my lawyer came to visit and told me that Monsta was found not guilty and that his main defense was that he grabbed the gun to try to stop me from shooting. I was in shock. I walked around Concord for a few weeks in an almost catatonic state. When I came out of it, the realization of my circumstances filled me up with pure anger. I was mad at the world. Joanne came to see me, and I put on a brave face, but I was hurting deeply. I was a mess mentally. I held it together while at Concord. It was after got I shipped to Old Colony Correctional Center (OCCC) that I began to unravel.
Initially, I was focused at OCCC. My plan was to remain disciplinary report free, complete programming, and transfer to MCI-Norfolk where the programming was more extensive, and a college degree program was available. I secured a job working in the Health Services Unit, participated in Toastmasters briefly, and enrolled in Life Skills. Then one day I simply exploded. I physically assaulted another prisoner, displacing my hurt and rage onto him. What followed was a succession of disciplinary reports that I recognize now were avoidable and fatuous. This succession of disciplinary reports was the beginning of the “snowball effect.”
I was transferred to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center (SBCC), the maximum-security prison. At the time, it had only been operating for perhaps six months. The tension in the air between the COs and the incarcerated men was palpable and, in my estimation, racial. My mother’s voice, which had become my defense mechanism over the years, kicked in immediately. I was apprehensive and I don’t think I ever landed on my feet during my two years at SBCC. The snowball picked up steam, getting larger and larger as it rolled down the hill. My inner turmoil and anger kept brewing. I was a walking powder keg on the cusp of exploding. I participated in a few groups, though I can’t remember now what they were. For each step I took forward, I took two backwards.
I received some disciplinary reports for fighting and other miscellaneous things, repeating the same patterns of behavior that I displayed previously throughout my incarcerations in Plymouth County and DYS. The cliché, “Old habits are hard to break,” is befitting here. I just couldn’t stop sabotaging myself. I became increasingly angered by the disrespectful, verbal, and physical abuse by the COs whom I deemed racist. In one incident, COs surrounded me in a pack because I had my t-shirt untucked. They approached and spoke to me in an aggressive manner, which triggered flashbacks of the trauma I experienced as a kid with DYS staff.
The incident that pushed me over the edge and landed me in solitary confinement didn’t initially involve me. I saw a group of COs being aggressive with another prisoner. As I stepped under the railing to see what was going on, a CO jumped in front of me and yelled, “BACK UP!” I didn’t think, I just reacted and punched him in his face, twice. My friends immediately joined me. The Superintendent happened to be in the chow hall that night and had his hands up gesturing for us to calm down. I punched him in the face too. It was chaos, with trays, fists, and feet flying. They evacuated the chow hall, and the incident was over.
For my actions, I was sentenced to 10 years in the Departmental Disciplinary Unit (DDU), a separate building located at the infamous Walpole prison where men are sentenced to long-term solitary confinement. The DDU was living hell. I was put in a cell smaller than a parking space with a concrete slab for a bunk, a desk, a stool, and a stainless-steel toilet. Lock-in was 23 hours a day. I was given one hour a day in the “recreation cage,” which is like a dog kennel. The environment was toxic and racism prevalent. Men were losing their minds. Feces, urine, spit, and blood were commonly thrown on the tier. To leave my cell for that one allotted hour a day meant risking an assault. It also required submitting to a humiliating, emasculating strip search where my body would be investigated – a reminder of my ancestors being appraised and sold on the auction block.
In addition to a decade in solitary, I was charged in court for punching the CO and Superintendent and sentenced to four to five years, from and after my life sentence. I was distraught and bitter; I couldn’t even begin to think about how I was going to survive 10 years in the hole without going insane. For the first several years, I was rageful. I picked up disciplinary infractions and more time was added to my DDU sentence. I ultimately spent 12 years and 8 months in the DDU.
When people ask me how I managed to do all those years in solitary without going insane, I don’t have a definitive answer. I do know that reading helped save me. I was propelled to pick up books and read more than I already did. I always liked reading because it allowed me to expand my thoughts beyond the chaos and utter madness of my environment. And it allowed me to see inside myself, paving a path for change. Malcolm X’s autobiography was one of the books that was instrumental in helping me begin to change myself. There’s a part of the book where he states:
In the hectic pace of the world today, there is no time for meditation, or for deep thought. A prisoner has time that he can put to good use. I’d put prison second to college as the best place for a man to go if he needs to do some thinking. If he’s motivated, in prison he can change his life.
His words struck a chord in me. I reckoned that if he could change in prison, so too could I. I got tired of living the way I was living, being angry, hurting others, and having this dark cloud about me. I didn’t want to be bitter any longer. And I knew that if I ever wanted to re-enter society, I first had to change – which meant learning who I was, how I got to where I was, and figuring out where I wanted to go in life and what I had to do to get there. Change for me didn’t come over night. I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly have an epiphany. It was trial and error. I was like a motorcycle that you had to keep kickstarting.
I remember the moment I first set an intention to change. It was around 2008. My best friend, Erick, and I were on the tier together. A few days earlier, we had been extracted from our cells for disrupting the tier. I ended up in the hospital on an eyeball watch, donning a smock. As I sat in that dirty, filthy smock, I felt I had hit rock bottom. I thought to myself, “This is the end of this madness!” When we were back on the tier, I wrote Erick a letter telling him I was done, that we had to start taking responsibility for our actions. We used to walk the cages and talk through the vents, having conversations about books we’d read, our families, our situations. I remember times we stayed awake until 3 AM deep in discussion. My friendship and conversations with Erick helped me get through the DDU. We had known each other since we were kids and he felt like a brother to me. We knew of each other’s struggles growing up, trying to survive our environments, and getting into trouble. We acted out in prison together. But then we got tired of it all. Tired of only being “criminals” in the world. We both knew we had something positive to offer the world if we could stop the cycle of acting out. So, we made a pact to help each other change our outlook and our lives. Erick has now been out of prison for years. The pact we made continues to inspire me to keep pushing forward and bettering myself.
A few mental health programs had made their way over to the DDU and I signed up for them along with a Spectrum program that dealt with anger. I was initially denied entry into these programs because I was on a life sentence. But I was persistent. Eventually, the prison system agreed that each program should have at least two openings for lifers. After I completed the groups, I continued working on myself of my own volition, occasionally getting reading material from the mental health staff that dealt with cognitive thinking. And I continued reading on my own.
As I said, change didn’t come overnight. Up until early 2009, the year of my first parole hearing, I’d had a few more disciplinary infractions. I knew going into the hearing that I would be denied parole and given the maximum setback of five years. However, I wanted to go forward with it to see what I needed to accomplish in order to be a viable candidate for parole. When the parole officer did my pre-hearing interview, she came into the visiting room, looked at me, then looked down at her papers, looked up at me again, sat down, picked up the phone, asked me my name, and then simply asked: “What happened?” I don’t think she expected to see a small individual across from her. I told her in no uncertain terms that I messed up, that I allowed my anger to cause me to make some bad decisions, and I accepted responsibility for my actions in prison and for the murder.
The 2009 parole hearing was very emotional for me. It really hit me that someone lost his life because of my poor decision-making and actions. I never wanted anyone to die that night, but my actions led directly to his death. It’s a stark reality that I have to live with for the rest of my life. After my hearing, I asked myself, “How can I ask my family and friends to support me when I haven’t been supporting myself?” And so I began to work even harder on myself. I learned to not bottle up my emotions and to use my anger to fuel me to do good deeds. When I received the denial from the parole board and read the summary, I was upset. I knew I was not the awful person summarized on that paper, but I also knew that I needed to demonstrate that I was something other than an accumulation of crimes and disciplinary reports. I was determined not to be discouraged by the parole decision. I doubled down on working harder. I set goals for myself that I wanted to accomplish after my sentence was finished in the DDU.
In 2014, after 12 years and 8 months in the DDU, I was transferred to SBCC. I knew that returning to general population after so much time in the DDU would be challenging. To return to the place where my nightmare in prison began was hard. I had trouble sleeping due to anxiety, the noise, and thoughts that the COs would come into my cell at night to beat me up. It took a few weeks for me to get acclimated to the noise and to shake the paranoid thoughts from my mind. I was kept in the orientation block for almost four months, which hindered me from attaining my goals because I could not get into programming. I was frustrated, but I did not act out in anger, as I would have when I was younger and emotionally immature. Instead, I reminded myself that everything is a process.
My patience proved to be rewarding. I was moved to a regular unit for a few weeks, then to the lifer’s unit where everyone and everything was calmer and more peaceful. The environment suited me well. I procured a job that I held for my entire stay there. I was part of the book club with other guys and members of the community. We met once a week to discuss books chosen by the group. I earned my ServSafe and Foundations 1 in Culinary Arts. I completed the High Risk Offender Program, Violence Reduction, and the Reentry Seminar Series. I also helped usher in Restorative Justice, eventually becoming a facilitator. Restorative Justice was by far the best program for me. It allowed me to see more clearly the harm and trauma I caused to my victim’s family, my own family, the community, as well as myself. It also allowed me to see that anger was a mask for my true feelings and emotions.
I reached out to mental health. I wasn’t deemed an open mental health case, but I was fortunate enough to be able to meet with the same mental health clinician once a month. This was a big step for me. I was able to talk about my feelings and process them in a more thoughtful and mature manner. During one of our meetings, the clinician recommended that I read the “The Alchemist” by Paolo Coehlo. I found the book in the library and checked it out, but it took me almost two weeks to actually open and read it. Reading that book was one of the best decisions of my life. It was beautifully written and had a profound effect on me. It’s about a boy who came from a family of shepherds. He sets out on a journey to find a treasure and is told he must find the Alchemist. As he went on this long journey, he acquired knowledge and wisdom through trials and tribulations along the way. Eventually he ended back to where he started, realizing that his treasure was always staring him in the face. I saw myself as the young boy. I realized that, for a person to find out where they’re going in life, their treasure, they must find out from whence they came. I still possess notes I took when reading it.
In 2018, after four long years at SBCC, I was moved to MCI-Concord. I was happy and proud of myself for the changes I had made. The hard work had paid off. I was and still am more determined than I have ever been in life. Since my time in Concord, I completed a number of programs to further facilitate and strengthen my growth. I attended a Restorative Justice retreat where mothers who lost their children, victims of crime, judges, senators, victim advocates, and other notable members of different communities participated. It was very moving and rewarding! To sit and have an open dialogue with people who suffered so much trauma in their lives showed the beauty in humanity and the act of forgiveness. I am currently enrolled in the dog program (NEADS) where we train dogs to assist veterans, people who are blind and hearing impaired, as well as people who suffer from PTSD. It is a great reward to be able to train a dog to help change a person’s life.
Finally, I am enrolled in Tufts/Bunker Hill Community College. I am working on attaining an associate degree in liberal arts through a collaborate effort by both schools. This program has been truly amazing and transformative. I have learned so much about myself and the world at large. My professors are extraordinary. They have inspired hope in me – the hope that I can go back into society and be an ambassador for change in the community and the world. I plan to complete my bachelor’s and I hope to earn a master’s in social work so that I can one day help youth or others in need.
I am now 42 years old. In reflecting on my journey, I realize that the chaos and dysfunction that permeated every aspect of my life had an adverse effect upon me. I was exposed to some harmful behaviors that over time led me to do the harming to others. In light of these hard truths, I make no excuses. I accept responsibility for my actions. Moving forward, I hope to pay it forward by giving back.