Trigger Warning

I'd been out barely two months when my intro to public health class the professor actually made the disclaimer, “This is a safe space. If anyone is feeling emotionally triggered, feel free to step into the hall.” I laughed out loud, I honestly thought she was making a joke. No one else laughed. It was completely serious. We were given trigger warnings many more times that class, and every time I had try to contain my inappropriate laughter. It always seemed like an obscene joke to me.

Trigger warnings make me cringe. Where was my trigger warning for my first strip search? That one, and the 200 that followed, actually included the phrase, “Spread your cheeks and cough.” Where was my trigger warning before being made to use the toilet in an open room in front of total strangers? Where was my trigger warning before prison guards decided their default mode of communication would be irate screaming? I DIDN’T GET ONE. Nevertheless, I survived.

Prison is not a safe space. I could not demand to be treated with dignity by the staff. I couldn’t complain that they’d spoken to me disrespectfully. It’s prison. I couldn’t request a private bathroom or opt out of a groping pat down. I got “emotionally triggered” many times until eventually I became desensitized and none of it fazed me anymore.

I still can’t take it seriously. My exposure to extremely uncomfortable things made me strong, and shielding yourself from discomfort can only lead to weakness. Or maybe I’m just calloused and desensitized.

It seems preposterous that as a society we invest so many resources in making campuses safe spaces but we have systematic policies to make prisons unsafe, lacking in respect and dignity.

Thanks, Prison

Today I got a job as a medical interpreter. This is despite three felonies and an ankle monitor. My life feels like it’s coming together, as if all the pieces had somehow exploded out and scattered but are now drifting toward me again. I am attracting them all back. The ripples of the stones I have cast are coming back upon me in waves of positivity.

I went straight from my Spanish for Social and Legal Services class, where we watched some introductory videos on how to interpret, to my orientation for interpreting where I watched some of the same material. The the office of the interpreting agency is the same building as Lifeworks, where up until a couple months ago, the Bureau of Prisons mandated me to go monthly for drug treatment.

I’ve been clean now around four years, so long that my memories from my addiction don’t even feel like me. I’m a fundamentally different person today. But I’m being punished actively for something distant that I no longer feel a connection to. I think again about drug crimes and what their level of traditional “criminality” truly is.

When you think criminal, what image does it conjure? Does it conjure 24-year-old me, drowning in grief, using large amounts of heroin, actively trying to inject every last dollar of mom’s life insurance, praying for death, sleeping most the day, not showering or even leaving my apartment? Conspiracy to distribute heroin, according the US government’s interpretation. The next time you hear that someone has been sentenced to “conspiracy”, please reframe this in your mind. More than half the time “conspiracy” is some variation of my own story. Conspiracy is a catch-all phrase applied broadly that ensnares people whose only crime is being a drug addict who hangs out with other addicts.

Being a drug addict wasn’t always a crime, and when it wasn’t, there was little connection between addiction and other forms of crime. I see stories of drug busts and I’m filled with a sense of futility.

But thanks, prison. I can acknowledge the futility and the heinousness while still being grateful for the unexpected opportunities I created for myself in that place. My federal sentence taught me more than I would have learned in my lifetime. I speak Spanish, I enjoy public speaking, I lead a healthy lifestyle, and I’m a medical interpreter. All thanks to you, Dublin!