What am I Doing?

It’s been a bad week. Although I know that I am surrounded by those people who are only trying to survive themselves, sometimes it gets overwhelming. I’ve spoken of my groups a bit, and I must say, they are the lynchpin of what holds value for me. These guys, these “hardened criminals” come into this little room. It seems, at the door, they leave the yard behind.

The yard is where they live, and the basic premise there is power and strength. You must protect the tiny little bit which is yours. This includes the physical aspects of your life, your television, your food from the commissary, your journal you keep because your crazy therapist tells you this is an avenue to save you soul. It also includes what makes you human, compassion, the ability to walk away, the ability to walk toward a life that has meaning. BUT, when somebody calls you, “bitch,” you need to deal with this, or everybody else sees you as victim and shits on you.

I hold this weird and horrible power. As one of my guys observed, “They come into group, and they perform; they do and say what they think will please YOU.”

It does not please me that they treat each other as animals; that they are reduced to staking claim of a little bit of psychic and physical space through violence. But I also do not begrudge them this. I have so much love and space and support in my life, I cannot imagine the incredible restriction and horror of having to fight for that which to me is a thoughtless and immediate thing. I cannot ask them to do something that puts them in peril.

So, they come into my room. We sit in a circle of ten or eleven in padded chairs which in and of themselves are a treat. There is a small table between us, which I cannot get rid of because there is no space. I have a chalk board, not a white board, on which I can write the essence of where we go today. They spread out around it, so when I write, there is no chance I would brush up against them by mistake. We cannot touch. Ever before in my life and my work, I could reach out with a settling pat or an approving touch. When they try so hard, they deserve meaningful recognition. It simply cannot happen here.

My chair is established. The other staff needs to be able to look through the window in the door to make sure I am safe, that some horrible gang rape or riot isn’t sucking me into its depths. The truth is so very different. This is the safest place I am in my day.

My drive in makes me a potential victim to deer, and trucks and the accidents on the road. Walking the yard to my office leaves me open to the errant individual that may wish to hurt me to pay back some slight. Or somebody “hired” to hurt me. In group, I have ten guys. I know that if one of them were to try and hurt me, the other nine would intervene. Some because they know they would be held accountable, the others because I hold something precious for them.

Who am I to hold this for them?

Today I am overwhelmed with sadness. There has been a series of incidences where those in power only reinforce the "fact" that I work with worthless animals. Men who do not even deserve the respect and compassion of wild animals we keep in zoos. How do they find the strength to rise above the degradation and try to find a way out of the mess they’ve brought into their lives?

Today, I have a guy in segregation on suicide watch. I will not wreck your day with the horrific and pitiable story of his life to this point. It is suggested to me, by a person in power, that we can fix him by, “…tying him down naked, and shoving something up his ass.” It is all I can do to not smack him upside the head and scream that this is exactly what has brought him here: somebody in power either figuratively or literally shoving his dick up this guy’s ass.

Today, I have one of the most amazing groups of my life. Ten of my guys come in, and I am on the hairy edge. Can I even describe it? We start with the concept of morals, and if these are something you are born with, learn and internalize or experience as something to abstractly understand. The thought goes, if you grow up in a sick environment, you never understand on a basic level why you shouldn’t just do whatever makes you safe or happy or able to forget.

The group erupts in discussion and disagreement, talk and cross talk. Suddenly almost everyone is deeply engaged, and fighting for what they believe is right. My co-workers are popping up in the window, checking if I’m safe. I give them thumbs up and move to quiet the group. “You need to quiet down, you’re scaring my co-workers…”

Mr. S. observes, “You’ve lost control of the group.”

Everybody stops. They don’t want me to feel like I’ve failed. I have not. I point out that the group is doing what it is supposed to do as long as we are all thinking and expressing ourselves. We just need to do it with a bit less volume.

So now I state I know many of them work from a base of rage. I wonder what is left if I ask them to take the rage away? Immediately, Mr. R. states, “Harmony.” He is in his early 40’s. He has been in prison since he was 19, and has worked himself down to level 1, the least restrictive environment. He spent the first eight years of his incarceration acting like an animal in pain, hurting everyone who came into his sphere. Somebody, somewhere, a guard, helped him see the endless pit this behavior offered him. He stopped, and now he is with me. Harmony.

He is Muslim, now. I understand harmony is a specific belief, one which I have but a hazy understanding of, and I suspect nobody else in the group even suspects. I would have him explain, but the energy has gone elsewhere. Later I ask him to prepare a lesson for us in the next group. But the fact that he has offered up such an intangible and precious idea as harmony has left me almost speechless with pain.

The idea of objects as meaning comes up next. Mr. S. looks at me, he is almost in tears. “All I want is a car and a nice apartment that I can come home to at night.” I reframe his desire as one for security and success. Those “things” are only symbols of the core of the meaning. Only later do I understand the look. He offered up his best thought. He expected me to smack him for it; to tell him he was wrong and bad, like every other person in his life has told him. And yet, he offered it up to me anyway, hoping for some kind of salvation.

Who am I to do this? What the fuck do I think I am doing?