My Inner Pain, From Not Being the Man I Knew I Could Be Was Unmeasurable…

My Inner Pain, From Not Being the Man I Knew I Could Be Was Unmeasurable…

March 27^th, 2022

Prison is a microscope. Everything you do and say is amplified and examined by some of the most observant people in the world. Every day I see people put so much effort into serving a need or want for themselves without any regard for consequences, or for others around them. If just a portion of that effort was redirected, the world would truly be a better place.

They simply want to acquire whatever it is they want in that moment to feel better about themselves. They do not care about you, themselves or anything. Sooner or later, you will be exposed to behaviors you can relate to if you are truly keeping an open mind and evaluating your own actions in order to change. I’ve recognized some of mine in what I’ve seen. It’s one thing to have negative, destructive behaviors in your past. It’s another thing to admit that and Do The Work to understand the feelings you had within yourself that drove those actions and influenced your decisions.

The key word is CARE. You have to decide you no longer want to hurt yourself or others. I define CARE as:

C – Conscious
A – Actions
R – Require
E – Empathy

My mother would always say “treat people the way you want to be treated”. I never truly absorbed that into my thought process and incorporated it into my being as a human, until I got to prison. That started with respect. Prison is all about respect. Do you require the people in your life to respect you, your boundaries? A lot of people answer yes to this question, yet they won’t respect themselves. How can you require those around you to respect you, when you won’t even respect yourself?

My actions in the past would show I had zero self-respect. Suicide is the ultimate action proving one’s lack of self-respect. I attempted and was fixated on suicide as a solution to problems at my lowest points in life. My inner pain from not being the man I knew I could be was unmeasurable. People who hurt and suffer, usually hurt and make others suffer too. People who love themselves and understand their pain, usually love and help others to understand and deal with their pain.

Everyone has their battles. The journeys and stories may be different, but the end result is the same. The end result is we are left with the consequence of how we act, or how others treated us. Just as we set boundaries for the way others are to treat us, we have to set boundaries for what treatment we are willing to accept from ourselves. You cannot enforce your boundaries if you do not care about yourself. Without enforcement, boundaries are worthless and mean nothing!

I wake up every day thankful for the work I’ve put in to gain back my self-respect. I am able to respect others boundaries and enforce my own.  I’m able to develop relationships with people that are genuine. I can solve problems in a manner that will produce positive outcomes.

Please Post your comments. They mean more than you can imagine.

Thanks for reading,

Mike

(3/27/22)