I Saw Freedom…But It Was Only a Reflection

In prison, freedom is only a mirage

By Robert Barton

This past month has been the most trying and emotionally draining in my entire incarceration. I have never felt more vulnerable, out of sorts, and miserable. Some of it has to do with me being quarantined in my cell 24 hours a day (with only 10-minute breaks for a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays), without being able to communicate with the family members and friends who I count on for support.

But the main driver of my despair was my cellie [cellmate]: After being granted parole — a status I had just been denied — he was on a countdown to release after 27 years of incarceration. And every time I looked at him, I saw the lure of freedom.

Last night was the most painful. We stayed up all night talking, marking the hours until noon when he walked out and away for the last time. I know he was oblivious to it, but the closer he got to that golden hour, the more he transformed into what was for me a mirage — the embodiment of a status (release) for which I yearn but keeps being yanked away at the moment I about to grasp it.

I saw freedom shimmer in his eyes as he envisioned hugging his grandbabies for the first time. I felt it in the tension that dissipated from his shoulders as he realized lockdowns would no longer separate him from his kids for weeks at a time. I heard it in his joyous laughter when an officer brought his lunch tray and I kidded that he didn’t deserve his chicken patty. His response: “I don’t want it! I’m about to go to Popeye’s and buy one of the chicken sandwiches with the tasty-looking sauce I always see on TV. In fact, I’m going to tell them to give me two of them, since prison only allowed me one!” You see, freedom gives you choices, something we’ve been deprived of all these years.

He was the human manifestation of freedom, and it was beautiful. I tasted it. I smelled it. I almost touched it. Oh, how badly I wished he could put me in his pocket and take me with him. I tried to soak in his rays of freedom but could only drown in the realization that I was still incarcerated.

There was a time when the release of a fellow prisoner wouldn’t have affected me this way, when I could be locked down in my cell for months at a time, with very little or even no contact with my loved ones or the outside world, and it seemed normal. Survivable. You see, I was raised in the bowels of the penal system; I’ve spent more time in prison than out. Over time, as I focused on surviving the here and now, so many layers of protection formed over my heart that it’s like a coat of armor. To be honest, without that, I would have gone crazy.

But it’s different now. My trip back to my home “state” (D.C.) for a petition that came close to winning my freedom showed me a different world. And it tore off my armor. My collaborator, Pam, asked me to write this essay in response to a Medium writing prompt related to reentry: “Tell us about an experience you’ve had coming back to something — or someone — after time away. What changed in your absence?” For almost two years, I had been away from the federal penitentiary that had been my “home.” But what changed wasn’t the “feds,” it was me. My armor has been ripped off. I’m no longer a prisoner! My body is held captive here, but my soul is home. This makes doing time so much harder.

All of my friends who have done time are telling me it’s going to be OK and I’ll be home faster than it feels. And Rat (my “brother”) told me that football season is here and once that’s over, it will be a new year (new chance). That’s the way he used to mark his “bid” (passage of his sentence) — by the sports seasons. But honestly, right now each minute seems like an hour, each day a year.

I yearn to experience the freedom I saw through the window of my cellie’s eyes, for real.