Exploring the meaning of freedom with a man who just got out of prison.
“The sounds are different. Even the air feels different. Everything is different out here. It often bewilders me,” Kevin confides to me. We are quiet for a while, tuning in to the sounds of the big plaza in downtown San Francisco, where we met only a few minutes ago. We hear children laughing and running. We hear a drunk man gargling right behind us. I hear Kevin’s big hand scribbling on his tally sheet as he counts the pedestrians. He probably hears way more sounds than I do.
“Being incarcerated sharpened my senses,” he says, while he puts his right hand in the pocket of his XXL body warmer. “I always had to scan my belongings to see if everything was still in place. I had to assess the mood of the other inmates by the sounds of their voices. I had to weigh the air. Sometimes the air was so thick with tension that it seemed hard to breathe. I got out of prison four months ago. I had been incarcerated since 1984.”
I was born in 1984. Since then, I’ve learned how to walk and talk, how to solve mathematical equations and make PowerPoint presentations, and how to play volleyball and the clarinet. I fell in love with my first boyfriend; bought a house with him; broke up and sold the house; traveled the world; obtained two master’s degrees; worked as a journalist, consultant, communications manager and lecturer; met my husband; married him; and moved to San Francisco. Throughout all those years, Kevin was in prison.
“I was sentenced to 25 years to life,” he tells me. “ A sentence like that changes you. There is no easy way out. You have to reinvent yourself.
“I started hosting addiction groups, building a healing community in prison. People use drugs for a reason, you know. Something is missing in their life, and they try to fill the void with drugs. I challenged them to find out what was missing. You have to learn to look at your feelings instead of covering them up with drugs. It’s all about rewiring the thought patterns attached to that feeling. How do you overcome fear and grief without drugs? How do you celebrate? I had to teach them that, like kids.”
I’ve never been prone to addiction. Nor have I been prone to any activity that could lead to life in prison. But the reality is that I live in a country where 2.2 million people are incarcerated. Nearly 3 percent of adults in the USA are under some form of correctional supervision. I randomly started a conversation with Kevin while waiting for a friend, not in the least expecting that he would be a former inmate. For the first time in my life, the statistics became very real.
I don’t think it’s possible for me to fully understand what it’s like to be physically incarcerated. The only prisons I intimately know are the mental prisons I’ve built for myself over the years. In my mental prisons, it’s not the concrete walls, the barbed wire and the bars that keep me from being free; it’s what I think people expect of me, my FOMO and my worries about “having a successful career” that keep me from fully living life. Meeting someone like Kevin makes me realize how powerful humans can be when they are truly free. I am impressed by his strong presence, his sense of purpose. Now that he is out of prison, it seems that nothing can stop him from becoming who he is destined to be.
I feel a sudden surge of inspiration. I want to introduce Kevin to everyone I know. I want to encourage him to write a memoir, to give lectures, to inspire the world. He looks at me as if he can read my mind.
“I’ve been asked to go onstage and share my story. I’ve been offered multiple jobs when I was fresh out of prison. But I’d rather be here, counting pedestrians and building community right on this square. I know all the addicts here. I can spot them from a mile away. Life is complex enough as it is. I just opened the first bank account I’ve ever had in my life. I have a California ID for the first time. I start right here and now, and we’ll see what comes next.”
I am so used to rushing into things. And I always expect to be successful right away.
“Do you have your driver’s license, Arjanna?” Kevin says with a sparkle in his eye. “I would love to get my driver’s license. Drive around the state a bit and see some of the parks. Unwind the mind, you know.”
Well, yes, I do have my driver’s license. And the freedom to drive anywhere I want to go — if my rigid mind allows me to take the frivolous liberty.
Kevin’s name and some identifying details in this story have been changed to protect his privacy.
