My Mind Shifted

Pretty good likeness of how a person can feel when he feels it all slipping away from him. That happened, or almost happened to me in El Reno. I'd been there over a year when something happened to send me down that slippery and dangerous road of despair and thinking desperate measures. I wanted out and was thinking about getting out my own way! This pressure to escape devoured me for a couple of intense weeks, and I honestly believe I was about ready to just hit the fence and crawl through the barbed wire, the hell with the rifles aimed at me, I WANTED OUT!

It all came to a head one day and I was saved by books. When I almost was at the end of my tether, I found myself in the prison library and with the Russian classic, Crime and Punishment in my hands. It took me weeks to read the damn thing, but during that reading I found out something about myself, for I was not unlike the main character in the book, I tended to punish myself for what I had done. Maybe not as much as Raskolnikov, but I felt some compassion and understanding of the beleaguered murderer. I think the author tried to give the impression that man would punish himself far worse than the state could, and that I do not believe. But at the time, that was the perfect book for me and it started me on a life-long obsession of reading and eventually to me actually trying my hand at writing.

Along about this time was when I received the divorce papers and I let it bother me more than it should, maybe, but now that I was where I was I was in need of support. Still, after I let it bother me for a few weeks I realized it was for the best. Marionette and I should have never married. Like so many other couples we thought marriage was the cure all for all of our life's problems, we didn't understand until too late that marriage would only add to our problems. Problems what needed two people working hard together to make it work. Marionette and Jerry Pat were not those hard working people.

Life in the joint wasn't great, but I kept my nose clean, except for that one time with Davis and by the last chapter was in the semi-honor unit. I still wanted out, but through the proper channels, not hitting the fence like a crazed bull . . . Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742