Is it lonely in prison? (My Prison Journey – Part 8)

This week’s upload is a response to a question I was asked by a friend, “Is it lonely in prison?”. I guess he wanted to know what it’s like for me being locked up. I am hoping it will encourage other curious people to send in their own questions about prison that hopefully I can answer for them.

Question: Is it lonely in prison?

My first experience of prison was being surrounded by people, yet not really being with those people – almost as if I was invisible to them. Nobody looked at me. Then again, I too was generally keeping my eyes downcast.

My journey through the British Prison system began in a busy ‘Local’ jail that held in excess of 1,200 prisoners. The largest wings held more than 200 men over 5 landings. It was a relentless assault on my senses. The sounds, sights and smells were overwhelming – an overload of information that I was struggling to process.

I found prison to be a world of bluff and front where everybody developed their own strategy to cope. My entrance to a British prison was an assault on my pride that started with the ritualistic degradation of the strip search – I was made to stand naked while I was examined and weighed by strangers (both staff and prisoner orderlies). My possessions were taken and I was issued with a number, called by a surname – de-humanised.

I remember looking around at the other newly arrived prisoners and thinking we were like a herd of prey animals. I was minded of Wildebeest on the way to a watering hole, running the gauntlet as we passed through lion territory. I thought of a joke I’d heard years before.

A wildlife documentary team were filming tigers in the jungle. All of a sudden they realised that the tiger they had been filming had taken a bit of an interest in them. When the cameraman lowered his equipment and changed his heavy boots for running shoes, his colleague pointed out that trainers wouldn’t help him outrun a tiger. The cameraman replied, “That may be true – but all I have to do is outrun you!”

In order to survive I resolved to not be the weakest member of the herd. But this choice (which I wager was also being made by my peers) meant that my relationship with my peers began from an adversarial standpoint – it was a zero-sum game – me or them.

In order to prevail I would have to keep myself to myself. If I asked a question I might be revealing vulnerability. It was like being afraid to speak when the teacher asks “Does everybody understand that?” – Nobody wants to appear stupid. I kept my mouth shut – revealed nothing.

My choice meant that I had to be self-sufficient and internalise all of my concerns. I was totally cut off, no access to a friend or family. I was in a pre-apocalyptic world, a time capsule where Facebook, Twitter, skype, texts and emails were science fiction.

I could write a letter, but I feared that my words and my emotions would be scrutinised, analysed and recorded by faceless screws. My deepest secrets would be laid bare by vindictive prosecutors at my trial. I would be ridiculed in front of the world. With this in mind my correspondence was stilted and functional, a banality of factual observations. Trust no-one.

My isolation grew.

My cell was my nadir, my loneliest place – a 6 foot by ten foot box that felt like a life raft. While it was my immediate saviour, it was only delaying my ultimate doom. I was also sharing my life raft with somebody else.

For the first week I spent almost 23 hours of each day in that box with that man. When we talked it was a physiological function. A series of time-passing pleasantries, a courtesy I had occasionally practised in waiting rooms, at bus stops or on train journeys. The words I spoke and those I heard vanished on the air – they left no impression on me. Those meaningless nothings acted as a vent, serving only to release some of the pressure that was building inside me – the truths that were bursting to get out.

For 4 months that was my life. Jostled and pressed against thousands of souls – just trying not to crumble and break.

My loneliness actually started to abate when I got a single cell. I found I started to become was less lonely once I was alone. I enjoy irony – it reminds me how little I actually know.

For the first time in months I could be honest with myself. I could check in with me. I could allow myself to be vulnerable. It was a relief. When I started to consider what the next decade(s) of my life were likely to look like I was fucking terrified. But as I started to face my fears I found that I could begin to develop coping mechanisms.

My loneliness is far less of an issue now. I am comfortable in my own skin, I’m good in my own company and that is the key. As I look back I realise that my loneliness was at its most acute when I was troubled. When I didn’t want to face up to things that were bothering me was when I craved having people around me – essentially to distract me. It took coming to prison to realise that I had been doing this my entire life.

While I felt lonely before prison and during my sentence, I do not expect that leaving prison will be any different. In fact I expect that my loneliness will be more profound if / when I am paroled. A pal of mine recently wrote me having moved to an open prison after 10 years away. On his first trip on a bus in a decade he said he felt like an alien.

He wrote, “Everybody was buried in their phones Moose. They had the earphones in and were either tapping away or watching a TV show. Nobody so much as looked at anybody else. One mother even had her phone while her kid in the pram had a tablet. Nobody talks anymore.”

I no longer feel lonely when I’m alone – to me loneliness is being invisible when you are in the company of others. You don’t have to be in solitary confinement to be lonely in prison.