Christine Goes to Prison...

We emptied our pockets, took bobby pins out of our hair and gave up our IDs. We walked through the metal detector and on through a big steel door. We climbed the stairs and entered a large room with many tables and a circle of chairs. We made our way across the new carpeting to the take our seats. The adventure had begun!

Last week I took three of my teen reporters to the Prison Empowerment Program. This included a workshop at The City School in Dorchester and then a visit to Suffolk County House of Corrections. I fully expected to be very intimidated, but it was not what I expected.

I actually set off the metal detector which scared me, as I thought sure it was my underwire bra (they had a long explanation about these in the "dress code" documentation stating that you can wear them, but they may set off the metal detector and if that happens you would be searched) and was afraid that I was about to be searched in a prison, which is far more frightening to me than the idea of being searched in an airport. In my defense, I do not own a bra without one! Luckily, they had me take off my boots and they turned out to be the problem, so no search. They were far more laid back than I thought they would be. We were brought up into the visitor's room, which the prisoners claim is the nicest area in the prison. I guess they say the place where they stay is not very nice. They live three in a cell! YUCK!

They had women prisoners speak and then men, and I thought the women were much better. It is funny. The women came in first and a lot of the kids were disappointed, as we did not know that the men were next. We assumed it was only women prisoners. Then the men came in and I really felt that most of them were full of it! The women each said why they were there, while most of the men avoided that topic. Some of them actually said A LOT without saying anything at all. I think they were stalling so they would not have to go back to their cells.

Some of the kids knew people there. One girl has a brother that has been sentenced to 24 years in addition to the 4 years he served while awaiting trial. One kid was sitting there and then one of the inmates pointed to him and said he was his nephew and the kid got really quiet and was crying in the end. I am not sure he was expecting to be so open about it being his uncle. One guy was honest about his reason for incarceration, and he is not there long enough in my opinion. He invaded a home, stabbed a guy and threw him out a second story window, breaking 16 bones in his body. He was facing life and in the end got only 2 years. He was talking about his brothers' and his experience on the streets and said they "shot people, they shot at people and they stabbed people." I can't believe he only has two years! Another guy admits to being stabbed 9 times, and shot six times and yet, amazingly, he is serving five years for a crime he didn't commit-YEAH RIGHT!

The women made me feel sympathetic. A lot of them were there on conspiracy charges. One went to the bank with someone and while they were inside they decided to rob the bank rather than just cash their check (her words). I am guessing the fact that she drove away and did not report it landed her in prison. Several of them were drug addicts and it was very sad to listen to them tell their stories of how they could not beat the addiction. One of these women talked about her parents being drug dealers and introducing her to crack at 14 years old. Another woman read an essay she had written about choosing heroine over her children and the guilt she has.

I contacted the director of education the other day to see about teaching writing part-time one or two nights per week at the prison. I feel like I could really make a difference for those who really want to learn and change. As it turns out, they do not currently have a writing program at the prison, but after a rather lengthy conversation, she invited me to write a proposal to to start one. I am so excited! What an amazing opportunity!

Another positive point for me was the director of the program at The City School. He was really cool. He has a hip hop band that went on tour and traveled to Cuba and Palestine among other unusual destinations. It was so great to meet a fellow traveler. I was sorry we did not get to discuss it in detail, but he said to give him a call. As I have mentioned, I really miss being around people who have traveled like that, so I look forward to meeting up with him to talk about that.

I also want to take an opportunity to ask him about what the prisoners would respond to before writing my proposal. He works with them on a weekly basis and would have a lot of insight. I would also like to hear some of his impressions of the guys I thought were full of it.

It is funny how you can go to a program like this with the idea of having it be an afternoon's experience and find it has a possible lasting impact on you. If I get this proposal in and approved, it will have done just that.

Lonely In A Crowd...

I am home. I am surrounded by friends and family and yet I have this feeling I have never experienced before. To be honest it started in Guatemala. I was not sure what it was at first. It made me feel a bit sad. It made me miss people. It made me long for my friends. I realized it was coming back again and again and tried to identify it, but it was unfamiliar to me. Eventually it was like a light bulb lit up over my head! LONELINESS! Oh my god! I am lonely!

This was a new feeling for me and one I admit that I never thought I could fall vulnerable to. I had certain ideas about what kind of people felt lonely. When I thought of loneliness I thought of desperate people searching for love-I have never cared if I find romantic love, in fact I go out of my way to avoid it. I thought of elderly people with no family who had lost all their friends to age or disease-I still have friends and family. I thought of the socially inept who never had romantic love or friends and family-I am a social butterfly. And yet, the feeling was definitely loneliness. How is that possible?

I started to examine this. I blamed my circumstances in Guatemala. Although, I meet people quite easily, I was there for four months. Most other people were there for a week or two at most. I was lucky in the beginning. I met several people who were there for five or six weeks. When they left the loneliness came. To add to that complication, the dangers abound for a woman traveling alone in Guatemala often did not allow me to go out unless I had an escort. That made things difficult when I was the only student living in my house. As much as I missed my friends in Korea, I started to look forward to returning to Boston. I know people in Boston. I would be close to my family.

When I returned to Boston I was overwhelmed. I had to buy a car, start a new job, find a place to live and was visiting my family in New Hampshire every other weekend trying to reconnect. I was so happy to be home and to be around my family. I was thrilled to get to know my nephew and to be more than a visitor again.

As time has gone by and I have become more settled in Boston, the loneliness has returned. At first I was frustrated and could not imagine how this could be. One weekend when I was feeling particularly lonely I went up to stay with my sister. Although I found some comfort in being with her and my brother-in-law, it did not stave off the feeling of loneliness. This has become increasingly frustrating for me, and I have had no choice but to examine it and try to understand the feelings.

I am so often surrounded by people, so how can I possibly still have bouts of feeling lonely? I started to think about the people I miss and what they represent. When I left Belgium I missed my two roommates and two very close friends the most. There are a few people in particular that I miss from my time in Korea. When I think about these people and the relationships I had with them, I realize they know me. They really know me.

Especially my best friends from Korea. They could tell by a tone or subtle body language what I was thinking or if I was uncomfortable, when others would never know. They understand my likes and dislikes and my hopes and my dreams and my quirks and desires. They know all my flaws and insecurities and love me and admire me regardless.

I realized that I do not have this with anyone here. I love my friends and family here, but after being away for so long I have changed and there is nobody that understands me like that here. This knowledge-this intimacy-came from spending a lot of time together and I have not had that with anyone here for years.

I only have two good friends in Boston (the rest are in New Hampshire and spread out all over the World), and although I am starting to make some new ones, they can't know me instantly. We can't share that kind of history immediately. I tired to explain this to someone the other night. It is great to have new friends and people you enjoy being around, but unfortunately intimacy takes time and there is nothing I can do to speed that process. The other tricky thing about new friends is that they come with their own lives full of people and obligations, and you have to be integrated into that slowly. That is hard.

Patience. I have to have patience. I have never been a patient person. This will be a great challenge for me. I have had fleeting thoughts of jumping a plane back to Korea or some other exotic destination. I have thought of running to another part of the country such as Florida or California. I then realize that I will have to deal with this in a new location. Even in Korea, if I stayed eventually my friends would leave. None of us are really permanent there. These are all only temporary solutions.

Realistically I have a lot going for me here. I have a great job where I get to make a difference. I have warm and caring colleagues that I have grown to care about very much. I have my family and I enjoy being with them. I do have good old friends here and some amazing prospects in new friends. I find I have to remind myself of these things on a regular basis.

I knew the adjustment would be difficult, but it has really just started to hit me recently. I am very lucky to have had such amazing friends and I know that they are my friends for life. One of my good friends from my adventures in Korea visited me in Boston in September and another one plans to visit next summer. I look forward to that visit and many more. I can meet them in all different parts of the world and, thanks to modern technology, I can talk to them on the phone and email them regularly. It is still hard to think of never getting to be part of their daily lives or to have them as part of mine. It is hard to imagine that we will never all be in the same room again and I will unlikely ever live in the same city with them again. These are things I still struggle with.

I know eventually I will have a group of people-of close friends-like that here. It is so hard to know there is nothing I can do to move it along. Waiting has never been my strong suit. I will be a good friend to those I have here and hope that eventually they will know me and love me, as my friends did in Europe and Korea.

If someone had told me a year ago that I could be surrounded by people and still feel loneliness, I would have called them crazy, and yet here I am lonely in a crowd of people. All I can do is acknowledge it and wait patiently for it to change.