“Really Bad Day: Another World (Part 8)”

It's much easier to describe what happened on Friday than how it made me feel. I didn't panic... I've never panicked in a crisis, and I never felt like we had enough information for this to be worthy of a panic anyway. I was concerned for Shane, but during the worst of it I just wanted Corinne to feel better, nothing much else mattered. I prayed for Shane to be OK and call us soon (with emphasis on "calling soon") so that Corinne could calm down. (When he finally called, she cried a lot more than she had before, but they were tears of relief.)

The worst part of the whole thing for me was visiting the prison. That's another world, a world I've read about many times, and seen pictures of, but a world I've never been touched by. It's not just the prison, but the whole world behind the prison, including the court system and the prison guards and everything attached to it. A place where men are caged like animals, where everyone is assumed to be guilty or "bad", where nobody is trusted.

It's a dark world, but it's not like what I've read in fiction. It's not the sort of thing that "sucks you in" and ruins your life. It's more like a darkness that rubs off and leaves a stain on anyone that comes near it. It's not a black hole, it's just "the night". For me, coming home, turning on the lights, and shutting the door -- shutting out the darkness -- was enough. Writing about it seems to be removing the stain.

What of the people who live in that world? The prison guards who can't trust anyone who isn't wearing a badge, or the cage-dwellers who can't trust anyone at all... what about them? Do the guards manage to wash the stains out every night, or do they stop seeing the stains after awhile?

There are plenty of stories about the cruelties inflicted in prison. A recent one concerned a guard who killed an inmate's kitten in a trash compactor. This sort of thing was incomprehensible until I saw Corrigan first hand, and looked into the eyes of two different prison guards (one of whom was ready to shoot me, and the other looked exhausted and lost). Now I can almost understand how that darkenss sticks to people and makes them forget whatever light they may have known.

Now I have to turn on a few more lights, and try to forget. I hope Shane can, too.

The End