Isolation

The harsh, scarring light glowers through the bars, a cruel beam of freedom yet restriction. As it passes over the bars, it casts reality into the room, creating a larger silhouette of the bars that already entrap me, magnifying my sorrow, like beams of light magnified by glass, melting a piece of chocolate. An inhospitable, unforgiving slab of concrete lies suspended off the ground next to me, protected only by a pitiful, mould-ridden mattress. The walls are scarred with the memories of a thousand rabid animals, scratches and marks etched only by pain and suffering. Every clunk of the doors locking, every monotonous hum of the air conditioning brainwashes us, supposed to rehabilitate us, to free us from our sins. It does neither. It only seeks to amplify our rage for the guards who trap us and confine us. My hands grasp at the bars; these cracked, weathered hands that have seen so much, life and death, now trapped in a room built by hands with no experience, no meaning. Every crack, every wrinkle is a story, stories now imprisoned by mere concrete.

This is not my own story, not mine alone at least. Many more suffer, every one of us on this block. It is a story of a thousand lives ruined, a thousand hands trapped. The great protector looms over us. But it is not our protector. It protects the world from us. They contain us like dogs, waiting patiently in line to be shot. But it is not I that is shot. It is just my personality, my emotions, my suffering. We enter this place lively, and cunning. We leave a vegetable, a pawn of society, with a permanent mark on our back that we cannot remove. They try to use weapons to keep us in, barbed wire topped barricades, razor blades watching our every step, the fence posts watching us. The world watches us. They are scared of us. They call us psychotic, criminals, evil. I call us freedom fighters, speakers of the truth, of a new course for the world. Anarchy and turmoil will liberate the lowest in society. It’s the fat-cats who push back, the corporate machines who use our lives as examples of punishment. They don’t know that the punishment only makes us stronger.

All the time has freed my mind from the imprisonment of society. I now realise that they don’t control me, they don’t trap and confine my mind to their basic morals with their selfish self-pity. You can’t know what it’s like to have everything restricted. The light on my face feels different now. It doesn’t corral me anymore. It liberates me.