It’s been twenty-six years in the making, or let’s say the unmaking of a life I once had. The only friend remaining is this pen and paper. In writing I find comfort. Not out of boredom but to briefly escape the repugnant, shackled way of life I am constrained to live in day in and day out and to be able to cope with the effects of time-stand-still in an environment governed by mandated orders from my captors. I wish I wasn’t here. But I am. I periodically dream of jumping in a vehicle to unceasingly drive for hours on end, with no destination in mind; just for the sake of driving; just for the sensation of my hands gripping the steering wheel, pressing and releasing the clutch through the gears, hearing the engine hum and rev as if it was a roaring lion seeking prey, feeling the adrenaline rise to the momentum of the rpm’s. Shifting second, third, fourth … the speedometer climbing upwards, seeing the pictorial objects on each side of the road steadily moving faster and faster through my peripheral vision and hearing the wind flapping in the open window like wind fanning a flag right before a storm. I dream of an open flame in front of a stove ready to boil water, prepping vegetables and chopping them with a stainless-steel knife, chicken breast on the kitchen top, or for that matter, a steak ready to go on a frying pan to saute, slowly prepping it to my liking.
Funny, how imprisonment compels you to miss the simple things in life. The things I am deprived of sitting in a cage in the middle of nowhere. Nothing at my disposal, but whatever my captors decide I should eat and do on a daily basis; whatever they decide to extend for my personal use. The last time I handled silverware was more than 26 years ago. The last time I kissed a woman was over 20, the farewell kiss from a wife during a prison visit informing me she was leaving me and marrying another man.
Many prisoners in here mentally try to block out the outside world in its entirety. This way they don’t have to feel the incessant longing for their loved ones and the world they left behind. I, on the other hand, allow instinctive impulses and desires, the joyful memories of the laughter of my children, the intimacy and affection of my wife, the family get-togethers with both of my parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and friends, to flog and flay my emotions and psyche hundred times over. It’s what keeps me sane. It’s what deters me from allowing this traumatic institutional life to engulf me in its punishing and routinizing effects – trying to make me forget what it feels to be free; this prison experience that slowly gnaws away at my dignity like water droplets slowly dripping on the same spot until it bores a hole to drive a hateful nailing thought of “This is your world. Nothing more.”
I revolt! I vehemently resist this carceral system (as I have from day one) which labels me as refuse and garbage as I am trapped and desolate, filled with sorrow, listening to the perpetual mocking songs of those who decided to bury me alive for refusing to cooperate and tell on others in the illegal cannabis trade.
Where’s my redemption for biting the bullet of prohibition? Where are my liberators? Where are the decision-makers who see the cruelty of my situation, the harshness of my penance, the brutality of my sentence as unfair and willing to do something about it? Ironically, my criminality still stands even though half the nation is gladly profiting from the same product I am chained for what seems like an eternity.
However I feel in this crowded prison setting, where prisoners are herded like cattle with nothing to do, but to be submerged in a well of desperation and frustration, chained and fettered in a world devoid of joy and solace, missing out on the simple things in life, bearing hundreds of years upon their shoulders, clad in colorless prison attire … I am still here.
Whichever many ways I tirelessly decry the mental and emotional harm I am suffering at the hands of my captors, at the hands of a brutal criminal justice system that chooses to enslave me for decades on end without a rehabilitative objective in mind – other than to fester my life in a pit of desolation and ruin; to demean and degrade my identity and turn me into a modern slave under the Thirteenth Amendment … I am still here.
No matter what, I’ll continue swimming upriver. Nothing’ll drown me. I believe there’s a good ending to this life story. There has to be. I know heaven sees my anguish, despair, and grief. I know justice will preeminently have its last word, because in the words of faith of someone who experienced brokenness at the hands of his enemy said, “Lord, you are my lawyer! Plead my case! For you have seen the wrong they have done to me, Lord. Be my judge and prove me right.” Lamentations 3:58
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Edwin Rubis is a cannabis prisoner serving 40 years for a non-violent marijuana crime. He has been in prison since 1998. His outdate is 2031.
You can help release Edwin from prison by donating to his family’s fundraiser: https://fnd.us/829bk6?ref=sh_
You can send Edwin a personal text message [through corrlinks]: (256) 770-4280
