The last few weeks have been extraordinary: extraordinarily shocking, extraordinairly painful, extraordinarily violating, extraordinarily isolating.

Everything has changed, maybe its for the best, it will be months, if not years, before I truly know.

My world has collapsed, everything I thought was real was a lie, an extraordinary violation of my privacy, my trust and my sense of security in the private universe I’ve spent the last five years painstakingly creating.

I am heartbroken, I am angry, I am isolated.

In my isolation I have reached out, asked for help, for friendship, reaching out is not easy for me. Instead of support or a hand, I’ve gotten silence, or “we don’t want to get in the middle.”

More isolation, more violation.

During my time of quarantine my main link to the outside world is social media, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time with my eyes glued to the phone, searching for happiness in its harsh blue light, but the world is broken, people are dying, economies are collapsing, suffering is abundant.

They say there will be a “peak” and then normalcy again, but that is a lie.

People will still have lost loved ones, their homes, their jobs, their economic security, their sanity and sense of safety. It breaks my heart and I feel regret for dwelling in my own universe and my personal drama.

I’ve been passing time by reading through my prison journals in an attempt to look back and prove to myself that what I feel now isn’t as bad as my life once was. However, the feelings of isolation and violation are the same, the situation is all that has changed.

I used to ravenously collect quotes and yesterday I found one that I remember writing it in my journal, why I wrote it, the feelings behind it, it hit a current chord with me.

Being watched is a soft violation that grows into a harder one with every passing day. Like dripping water on a stone, the eyes of other people wear you down, slowly, invasively. They leave a hole.

This quote came from Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent, a journalist who voluntarily checked herself into a three separate mental health facilities to uncover the failures of the mental healthcare system.

Her quote is not wrong, but being watched is anything but a soft violation, maybe its soft when you volunteer to be watched, but when it is beyond your control, its degrading, demeaning and, in many cases, a form of depredation.

I wrote that quote in my journal because I HATED being constantly watched. Every move I made being clocked by guards, by cameras, by the sign in/out books where we were forced to log our movements. Knowing that guards would watch the cameras for women to leave the showers and choose those moments do their rounds, with the intention of catching the women naked in their cells. I remember sitting at my desk and then looking up to see a guard’s face pressed up against the 2×10 window in my cell door. Just standing there, smiling, watching me, I never knew how long they were there and I couldn’t ask them to leave, I had no control, it wasn’t my life and it was their prison.

Just writing this makes me sick, the feeling of knowing you’re being watching and having no control or say over it, is disgusting.

Oddly, I was released into a world that loves to be “watched.”

In my current isolation, I seek comfort by watching others, specifically, gender reveal videos, which are my own personal form of self-flagellation. I post here and on my social media pages freely, I am watched as well, but this time its not violating, its voluntary and I have control over how I am watched and by whom.

As I sit and dwell on my mistakes and the “should have, could have, would have” of my current life, I continue to look back and remind myself that I do have control now. I can control what I do, where I go, how I react. If I want to stand in the middle of my yard and scream, I can. I can shut the drapes, shut down my phone, shut out the world. I have control now and I will NEVER let anyone take that away from me again.

Speaking of quotes, I’d like to end this post with one of my favorites.

In another journal I found this quote from one of my favorite authors, Augusten Burroughs, it comes from his book, This is How. This book meant the world to me when I was incarcerated and as I reread the numerous quotes I copied out of it, I realize I need to get another copy and read it again.

The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycled bits and pieces of the universe. This matters, because origins matter…we were particles that came together to form into star, after star, after star, until almost forever passed, and instead of a star what formed was life-simplistic, crude, miraculous. And after almost infinity, there we were.

This is why, for you, anything is possible.

Because you are made of everything

Back then, this book made me feel like I could survive anything: hell, solitary, personal and physical violation. It reminded me I could get through it all and that hasn’t changed.

I will survive this,

WE will survive this.

The human race will come out of this broken in many ways, but we will survive and survival is what matters, the beautiful thing about humans is we can adapt and we will. We will adapt and create a new lives out of the broken pieces.

We are stars, made of everything.

Watch us shine.