Why I’m Choosing to Go To Prison (part 2) Current Traumatic Stress Disorder (CTSD)

“ Trauma in a person, decontextualized over time, looks like personality. Trauma in a family, decontextualized over time, looks like family traits. Trauma in a people, decontextualized over time, looks like culture.”
– Resmaa Menakem

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The Trauma

I really appreciate you being here, and I hope this blog can do something positive for someone or help drive cultural change. I did set this blog up to be able to publish posts via email, and with this I hope to be able to continue publishing during my period of incarceration.

My first interaction with the ‘criminal justice system’ in Grayson County, Texas was at the young age of about 6 years old. My mother’s home was raided by dozens of officers who confiscated a controlled substance as they placed my mother under arrest and took her away. I dont remember most of the event as I’m sure the psychological defense mechanism of repression kept the majority of the trauma from my recolection, but I do remember one thing vividly. I was left in the house alone with the officers waiting for my dad to come pick me up. One of the officers was asking me about my Nintendo games. I descibed the various games to him as he asked what they were and if I liked them or not. Then he unplugged the system and stacked it in his arms along with all of the games and contollers.

Then the officer would proceed to walk out the door with it all never to be seen again. This officer stole my Nintendo from me.

The Righteous

Many other officers witnessed my Nintendo being stolen by their comrade, and nobody other than myself seemed to see even an inkling of wrong-doing in this act of theft. This utterly confused me, and made me question who the ‘bad guy’ here actually was. It wasn’t until 2 decades later that any light was shed on this event. This phenomena of how a humans can maintain a sense of righteousness while clearly behaving in tryannical ways was illuminated as I sat watching original footage of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment in my Psychology of the Offender course at University of North Texas.

We learned that the propensity for abusing other humans is not determined by personality, but by role in the social structure.

The 6 year old me now acutely4 understood our reality as I sat watching this experiment so many years later. The ‘thing’ that allowed these officers to do me wrong under the guise of doing right was simply how they were labeled within our society. The title of ‘law enforcement’ provided a sense of self-righteousness that ‘justified’ anything they did as morally correct, and labeled anyone they victimized as ‘criminal’ and thus morally incorrect. So there were not ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ per se, but rather just humans that we collectively label as good or bad. We then display a conformation bias based off of these labels that further perpetuates the labels and makes it harder to see when the ‘good guys’ are in reality doing bad. The belief that there are ‘good guys’ vs. ‘bad guys’ creates the ‘bad guys’, and makes it ok to oppress, prosecute, and persecute certain people regardless of anything else.

Current Traumatic Stress Disorder (CTSD)

The original trauma experienced by my 6 year old self has been recreated and compounded many times over during my lifetime sometimes a result of my own behavior, but other times it was not because of anything I did personally.

There was trauma solidified in my brain as my biology learned to somehow defend itself every time I went to visit my mother during her incarceration. It hurt each time I tried to connect with her through glass as she sit in jail.

There was the additional trauma of becoming a ‘bad guy’ myself for the first time as I was arrested for drinking alcohol at a high school party.

The time the DEA in Houston dragged my sales crew and I out of the club, blind folder us, beat us up a little, realized we were the wrong guys, and then drove off without word.

There was the traumatic night I intentionally stood in between 3 Sherman Police Department officers with guns drawn and the guy who at the time dated my mother on a porch with no more than 5 foot seperating myself from the barrels of the loaded pistols to my right. To my left, also no more than 5 feet away, stood that drunken boyfriend holding a barbell and weights over his head that obviously weighed too much to be thrown the distance required to surpass my position and reach the police. Here I begged the officers to deescalate the situation as I stood purposefully in their line of fire, and here the trauma compiled as the 3 officer’s 8 gun shots whizzed within inches of my 16 year old body to explode into the chest and stomach of this man who posed no realistic threat to the officers. By the time Howard hit the ground beside me his body was already swelled up to 3 times the size it normally was.

There was the day the trauma of that shooting returned to rack my brain as I turned the corner into the kitchen of our family home to face two Grayson County Sheriffs who had already entered the home with guns drawn and pointed at my chest and stomach. They were sweating bullets, and If i would have flinched or reacted hastily my body would have itself swelled as they fired shots into it. I held nothing in my hands this day, and also on this day I was put under a fate much worse than arrest. On this day I was placed into a State of Texas mental health detainment where the only ‘right’ that I had was the right to have the state assign a random attorney to hold all of my rights. The only information provided to me on this day as I was cuffed was that I did not commit any crime and that I was not being placed under arrest. Then once I was placed in the back of the Sherrif’s SUV while ‘not under arrest’ the officers recited to me my Miranda Rights and asked me if I understood them. They just looked confused as I replied that ‘I overstood’ and then procedded to explain to them how the Miranda case didn’t apply to me in this situation since I was not being detained as a criminal who was under arrest. They looked at me as if I was the one who was confused, and then they shut the door of the SUV. One of the Sheriff’s profusely apoligized to me as he shook my hand while dropping me off at my doorstep 4 hours later after the local mental health authority cleared me from my confinement in a local hospital as mentally healthy and not a danger to society. On this day my ‘right’ to an attorney was never honored despite my multiple verbal envocations of that one right while under detainment in the hospital.

The trauma I suffered just months after that non-arrest detainment when I was asked by another pair of Grayson County Sheriffs to leave a property, and after being asked I immediately complied by leaving said property. This apparently was not quite enough for them. As I began to walk off they stopped me ang gave me a choice to make. They said I could either start walking to my home, or I could be placed under arrest. Being ‘free’ I stated I was not walking home, but walking somewhere else entirely. They said I could not just walk anywhere I wanted, and confronted me again with my only 2 options. I decided on the second option, turned my back to them, and placed my hands together behind my back in the now ever-so-familiar ‘handcuffed for arrest’ pose. They indeed handcuffed me, but then drove past the jail. They drove to another hospital where I then realized I was under mental health detainment once again. This time I wasn’t provided any rights. The first mental health hold I refused to comply with any order from hospital staff. This time I did everthing they asked, and checked myself out 2 hours later. Beforehand, the same local mental health authority again confirmed my sanity and determined I was not any danger to society. Unfortunately during this event I forced myself to urinate to provide them urine for a urine analysis. When I did force myself to pee for them I blew out a hemorrhoid for the first time in my life, and the result was extreme pain in my ass while not being able to walk for the 3 days that followed. This physical trauma still reoccurs to this day, and with it so does the psychological and emotional trauma.

The time I walked into the Grayson County Probation Office with the flu and diarrhea created more trauma. When asked to urinate for a drug screening, I requested if I could first go number 2 because if I tried to force out a number 1 only the number 2 would also occur uncontrollably. Since I was a ‘bad guy’, and surely trying to commit another offense or something I was told that I could not relieve the number 2 first. So they watched as I force myself to pee , and as I advised, the shit could not be contained. I handed in my UA, which was negative, and walked out of the office with liquid shit running down my legs and into my shoes. I was supposed to go right back to work on this day, but after the time it took to shower and change clothes I was now late and written up by my manager.

The trauma of the day just months later in the same office when a probation officer tried to have me revoked and put in prison because she ‘didn’t like my attitude’. This was after she asked me my opinion, and I provided it. I didn’t think marijuana use was immoral, wrong, or bad. I still do not think it is wrong. She didn’t like my beliefs. I didn’t violate any court orders or terms of my probation.

Then there is the current trauma of this time… The November that just passed, after I passed evaluation through that same mental health entity per a court order, had passed all UA’s, and was meeting the terms of my probation is when I experienced the most current of the trauma. On November 18th, 2021 my UA showed a very faint line corresponding to the, I presume, Amphetamines category. I presume this only because my probation officer asked me when the last time I had used cocaine was. It has been like 18 years since I have used cocaine, and a few years since I had used any other Amphetamine this being Adderall. I responded honestly accordingly.

Liar.

So now I’m treated as both a cocaine user and a liar by my officer. The tone had changed from ‘visit’ to ‘interrogation’. My probation officer is adding the requirements of counseling at the probation office, referred me to go back through the process of evaluation from the local mental health entity, and then threatened to run my case back through the courts. It was a threat to my freedom. It was a threat that she could decide that I needed to go to prison, and that she would. It was also traumatic, and it was the most traumatic (because it is the most current) of the Trauma.

Now either my penis on a psycho-physiological level, or my subconscious on a psycho-emotional level refuses to pee for others on command. When I cannot the probation department marks it in the record as a ‘refusal to test’. Omfg. This is trauma Hell.

Imagine that…

I would rather serve my prison sentence.

Damn…

“Current Traumatic Stress Disorder afflicts me.” – Me

“Current Traumatic Stress Disorder (CTSD) afflicts us…”
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