Letter:
Transcript:
Dear Jean Casella,
My names Juan Diaz Jr and I’ve been in the SHU 8 years. I was talking to Billy Blake the other day and he mentioned that Solitary Watch always welcomes letters, short stories or essays that detail, to some degree or other, what life in Solitary confinement is like.Accompanying this letter is a copy of a letter I wrote a friend a couple of months ago. I’m hoping it could be of some use in shining a light on the horrendous practice of punitively locking human beings in cells for months and years on end and claiming it’s for their correction. There’s not one iota of empirical evidence that supports this claim. If you believe the letter I wrote to my friend is worthy of being posted on your website please do so. My grammar isn’t great but I was told that content takes priority over form. Thank you so much for your time. Billy sends love.
Sincerely,
Juan Diaz Jr.
Dear U,
Circumstances on my end have improved a degree or two since I last wrote. I’ve been moved to the upper level tiers and have a gorgeous view of the sky and distant horizon. I love to watch the sunrise, which has been so rare an opportunity for me since my imprisonment. Sunrises always call on me to contemplate the mysteries of the universe, of existence, and of human love & connection. So they call on me to contemplate the mysteries that are beyond us and within us. I also love watching the colorful transformations the sky goes through as the sun rises. I like to believe this cosmic, kaleidoscopic dance and fusion is a strayed practice of Gods consciousness. I have a lovely view of the heavily wooded landscape that surrounds the prison complex I’m confined in as well. There’s a road that meanders through these woods. Metaphorically, it illustrates in my mind mans complicated urge to alter the nature of things in a way that creates a smoother passage through the challenging beautiful and wild terrains of human life. I’ve begun my behavior therapy sessions and find them enjoyable, enlightening. It’s nice to get out of the cell and have meaningful conversations. I spoke to my mom the other night over the phone. She was very happy to hear my voice and complimented me for not only my ability to survive DOCCs most severe punishment practices but also for refining and strengthening myself in spite of them.What my mom doesn’t know and could never know is that this is mental and spiritual refinement/ strengthening is simply me compensating for the other areas of my mind and soul that have been deeply injured by 8 years of solitary confinement. My mom cannot see the way I’ve become socially withdrawn. It isn’t possible for her to observe me pacing back and forth in a cold and brutal space with manic thoughts racing, colliding, catapulting, descending, crashing and burning into a logical, inconclusive mental dead-end. She cannot conceive an image of me gradually absorbing into my entire being the coldness and brutalness of my living, dying space. She’ll never have actual visions of me working into my own eyes in the mirror and seeing an empty and neglected graveyard reflected back at me. She does not know that on my countenance I wear the look of the haunted and trapped; a look that seems to intimidate and repel everyone who sees it, deepening my socially isolated existence. She cannot imagine the insomnia, the fractured sleep patterns, the waking up constantly through the night and each time realizing I’m in the darkest, saddest, loneliest place on earth. She’s unable to hear my muffled asphyxiated screams for her, my begging and pleading that she return me to my essence, to the safe, secured, warm, nourishing and fear-free environs of her womb. What my mom knows is only what I’m willing to reveal to her, which is that somehow and somewhat involuntarily and miraculously I’m surviving this horrendous ordeal. But my survival isn’t guaranteed. No human living under these conditions can offer that guarantee. A young man in his early 20’s attempted to commit suicide in the cell I’m currently occupying shortly before I was shoved in it. He made a noose out of ripped up bedsheets and weaved the top end of the noose through the numerous circular holes in the perforated steel plate covering of the ceiling vent. He stood on a stack of books, placed the noose around his neck, and stepped off the stack of books. He hung there for what must have felt like an eternity. But the bedsheet rope could not or would not hold his weight for long. Perhaps his sail was too heavy with pain. The rope snapped. A CO making rounds found him crumpled on the cold concrete floor surrounded by a felled stack of books and a glistening ring of his own urine. His tongue was lacerated and bloodied. Part of the bedsheet rope burned into the tender skin of his neck, leaving a scarlet reminder of his fall. His body was totally devoid of consciousness, but not of life. On his bed was a note intended as a postmortem communication to his mom. It simply said, with devastating sorrow and finality– “perdona me madre” (forgive me mother). All the suffering, regret, heartbreak and love in the world is contained in those three words. Many men of latino descent in prison have them exact words tatted across their back. It’s the burden they, we carry. It expresses conscious the deepest and most religious yearning to un-create the pain we give unto others and ourselves. Conversely, and unbeknownst to many, even those who wear this sacred message on their very own skin, is that these words are also expressive of the higher need to forgive others for the pain they’ve brought upon us and consequently, to themselves. The busted bedsheet noose still hangs from the ceiling vent in my cell. I leave it there as a reminder of the destructive, all-surrounding pain enforced social isolation inflicts on the human mind, body and soul. Humans need each other, more so the most troubled among us. That should be obvious by now. We’re one of the most social creatures on the planet. Everything from how our brains are structured to how we structure our society is influenced by that fact. Every day I work at this busted bedsheet noose. This horrifying apparatus of self-causing death is not hard to see how someone can come to believe this to be an escape hatch, a fantastical pathway to spiritual and mental freedom from suffering. A worded mind looks at the reality of one thing and sees an altogether opposite reality; a reality, which in all reality, does not exist. I wish there was a way to apply the illogical concept of alternative facts” to the experience of a human life lived in solitary confinement but there isn’t. Torture warps the mind and can cause it to seek the destruction of sef. Solitary confinement is torture. That’s a fact– the one and only fact.
Love & Gratitude
-Juan
Codes:
Keeping track of time: how long they’ve been in solitary; connections to the outside world through communicating; resistance by prisoners: public exposure through writing; emotional geographies: views of outside; emotional geographies: positive emotions; metaphors to: outdoors, being buried/asphyxiated, death, the body; connections to others as coping: family, in therapy, humans; difference in positions between prisoner and person outside; emotional geographies: realities and reminders of experiences in solitary; spirituality, self improvement as coping; psychological/emotional impact of solitary: isolation, manic thoughts, insomnia, trauma, suicide; social conditions of brutality; self-identification to culture; forgiveness, transcendence as coping
