“What does it feel like to come work here in jail” he asked. It’s not the first time one of the guys here asked me that. But this time it was a little different. Because I hadn’t been here in a while. Because it was the first time with this group. Because I had just asked him what it felt like and he told me that sometimes he just was so tired he thought he wanted to give up.
What working at Rikers surfaces for me is that not many people in here are inherently evil. That there are many reasons why they make the choices they make. And that there are lots of commonalities in the folks I meet here. Especially in the young adults dorms: black and brown bodies, broken families, alternative relationships built on the street. And how hard it is to break cycles, to change our lives, to stick to it while old habits pull us back. Freedom is in the choosing.
So here is what it feels like:
So close to accepting.
So close to being inundated.
So irrelevant.