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Another reason he couldn't keep a straight job.
The fact of the matter was, the time, it wasn't hard. For me anyway.
It wasn't the hours locked in the cell, the fact that other people told you when to eat, shower, go outside, sleep. It wasn't the random shakedowns. It wasn't the shitty healthcare. It wasn't being stuck.
All that, I dunno, I had adjusted well enough. It becomes rote after a while. If you weren't the type to bemoan your fate, the time wasn't awful.
What was hard was the man I had needed to become to ensure my life could never go down this road again. What was hard was denying thirty-some-odd years of traditions, of loyalty, of love. What was hard was hollowing out a heart that used to be full of my parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, and nieces, and making it stay empty. What was hard was knowing that three years in, they still weren't accepting that the Eli they knew and loved ceased to exist when he walked into these walls. What was hard was knowing that while I was a hollowed-out shell, they were still holding onto hope that I would come around.
After three years, that wasn't even possible anymore.
There was none of that man left.
All that was left was the cold, the detached, the depersonalized psyche that the shrinks had wanted to medicate, thinking it was due to some prison horror that I wouldn't discuss.
They refused to accept that it was self-inflicted.
And, well, once you carved enough away inside, there weren't even any edges that could grow back together. You were just pieces.
Disconnected was a state I lived in.
I got up, I made my bed, I did checks, I brushed my teeth, I ate breakfast, I went to work, I showered on days it was allowed, I had my hour or two in the yard, I worked on my art, I slept.
Rinse.
Repeat.
Feel fucking nothing.
The only time there was even a hint of anything other than absolute and complete disconnection was when a letter would show up from one of the girls.
Yeah, letters.
Because they were big enough to write them now.
Three years of Fee keeping that candle lit for them, not knowing she was only hurting them, not accepting that just banking it out would be the kindest course of action.
Once I got the first letter, in all caps and full of information about her new cousins - you know, babies I would never get to see - I had felt a pain akin to something being ripped out inside. From then on, I accepted them, but couldn't bring myself to open anymore. Not even when they started not only coming from Becca, but Izzy and even Mayla. Then, soon after them, artwork started from Jason who couldn't have been more than a toddler by the looks of things, and whose parents, yeah, I didn't even fucking know which of my brothers had him.
That realization was the last, most lethal, painful pang of my dying fucking heart.
I kept all of them unopened now, locking them away in a box under the bunks. I tried not to even look at the names on the address labels.
Better not to pry open that can of worms.
Better to treat it like junk mail you keep forgetting to throw away.
Better to not have a family at all.
Better to shut it all the fuck down.
"Yo, Mallick," the guard called, stopping outside my cell. "Missed mail call," he said, holding up a small white envelope.
Normally, you missed mail call, you were fucked. But I had made this guy a portrait of his baby that died of SIDS to keep on his mantle, so he was a little more forgiving of any of my small indiscretions.
"You know the deal," I said, exhaling hard. Mail days sucked.
"Nah. Not your family, less you got some distant relative with the last name Reid."
I turned fast, too fast, showing just a hint of a weak spot that I didn't want anyone - not even a guard - to see.
"Girlfriend?"
"Chick that stole my dog," I corrected, going for a calm tone as I took the envelope.
"Stealing a man's dog then writing him. What a shit move," he said, shaking his head as he ambled off.
My hands went almost a little frantically for the tab, sliding my finger under to rip it open.
Why was she writing again? After two years of nothing?
Did Coop get sick? Die?
Why put that on some dude already in prison if that was the case?
It was a pretty dick move.
I couldn't tell you why I was so desperate to read it, aside from genuinely hoping my dog was okay. Maybe it was a genuine need for human connection, for a contact on the outside, to be reminded of normal life.
It was easy to adjust to prison.
When there weren't reminders that there was another way to live.
