Confessions from the Barbed Wire Monastery
By: Prison Bob
The inside of a prison cell
In this series, the Reed Secular Alliance has opened up a window into life in prison. For the past several months, we have posted Letters from the Barbed Wire Monastery, which are a prisoner’s reflections about atheism, prison, and his own psyche. In this edition, Prison Bob speaks about his crime and the effects of alcohol on his psyche. It is an interesting read.
Hello.
I have been writing under the pseudonym of “Prison Bob”. I am an almost 40-year-0ld male who is incarcerated in the state of Oklahoma for the crime of sexual assault on a minor child.
Did I physically do this? No. However, I did tell the youngster in question and her mother that I would do so, as I held them at knife point. Do I deserve the twenty-year sentence I received? Yes. Would I change that horrible night, if I were able? Yes. Yet I cannot, so the best possible option is to grow from there on out. In that interest, I write.
I write in order to explore my psyche. It isn’t always a bright and cheery place. Sometimes, I find minefields, which cause me to revert to an almost animal state. Yet those are becoming fewer and farther between. Now, as the haze of a couple decades worth of outrageously heavy drinking begins to clear, I can actually think.
One school of thought believes that you cease maturation with your first drink and resume the process once your system clears of the poisonous hydrocarbon. If that is true, then I’m almost driving age. If it isn’t true, then I’m just another idiot in prison for acting on unrestrained emotion. Okay – not emotion – pure animal instinct. I almost said greed, but only humans are greedy, by my way of thinking.
However, history proves that my way of thinking has not been to the benefit of others or humanity as a whole. Yet, I still try. And even manage to do well sometimes.
Thanks.
-Prison Bob
