Yes prison in it’s literal sense. Like the box where you put the people who’ve been naughty.
Source: Pixabay.com
Intro
Alright, as I’ve mentioned in my introductional post that I’ve done some time in prison, 8 months to be exact, which isn’t long enough to completely become a brainwashed psychotic, but definitely long enough to get a good taste of it. Why I went to prison? I’ll leave that for another post for another time as my Alcoholic Stories time-line resolves itself. Same applies to prison conditions out here, I won’t be going into any detail, not today.
But lets get into the subject, about the most important things you learn to appreciate in life, after having done time.
Family
By far the thing you learn to appreciate the most is family, because family is your own blood, your origin of birth and your future. Family is everything and I was completely oblivious to the fact prior this experience, I’ve always gotten along fine with my mother, despite being a very troubled young kid, but I never learned to appreciate the fact. From now on I put in maximum effort each and every single interaction with my family members. Family should never be taken for granted.
Friends
Prison is definitely a strong statement about your friends, some inmates believe that friends don’t exist at all and some inmates make new friends in prisons. Ofcourse these kind of friends will be the same ones who will get you back into troubles. I’m extremely blessed to have friends who supported me through that period, kept sending me letters, gifts, keeping me up with news and just being very supportive. It’s amazing how this experienced tightened my bonds with my friends, but I also lost a few contacts who I thought were my friends, but in reality they weren’t. Simply put they didn’t want to be associated with me at all, due to criminal past.
Food
Now I’m gonna appear like a spoiled brat for mentioning this but food, the food over here, at Eastern European prisons is just awful, it’s gross, it’s nasty. The menu was extremely simple, I still remember it top off my head
Breakfast: extremely watered down oatmeal, that sticks like camel’s spit. Taste is just god awful, I literally skipped breakfast.
Lunch: Either potatoes, rice or macaroni, sometimes with few overboiled vegetables. Sometimes we were blessed enough to have some „salad“ which was just diced cabbage and a drip of oil. That’s it. Also the size of this fine course was about 1/3 of a proper man’s dish. But you get used to it, eventually.
Dinner: Soup with no ingredients. Usually a floating cabbage and 2 slices of onions. No salt, no pepper, no nothing. And 2 slices of dried up bread.
Manners and ethics
In prison you truly learn to appreciate people who’ve been „raised proper“, people that can speak eloquently, with polite manners, nothing fancy, but it’s really easy to get trapped into prison speak, which is just horrible and everybody can detect it off miles. Also politeness goes a long way, knowing when to talk and how to talk. Prison is nothing like it is in movies, gyms are forbidden here and all the craziest psychos are isolated, the biggest fight is mental in your head, and through that insanity you just learn to appreciate manners. I’ve learned to respect others and more importantly respect myself.
Privacy
I just can’t describe how it feels having no privacy, not a single moment of total privacy for 8 months. This effects state of mind really badly, not being able to piss in private, not being able to wash in private, always eating with other inmates, always been watched by guards and cameras. And to think I've served 11 months in navy, so I know very well what's it like to be bunked down with other men, but this is something completely different. Ever since that I’ve gone super paranoid, I’ve ghosted my social media completely and it’s completely beyond me why anybody would post personal info and pictures of themselves to an advertisement platforms and for FREE. Crazy, but that’s what Facebook and Google are – advertising platforms, that’s how they make most of their revenue.
Coming to Steemit and blog about extremely personal subjects has been a huge overcoming for myself and I think of it as an achievement, because I’m not too fond of sharing about my personal details, but I’ve made peace with myself and am confident enough to post pictures to Steemit. I’m confident enough that I’m fine with being identified even on a name basis or on my looks. It’s ok.
If this post gets to 100$ I’ll write a very detailed post about Eastern European prison conditions in as descriptive matter I possibly can.
If this post gets to 300$ I’ll write a whole post about why I went to prison in the first place and how my life was there. It’s a really hot topic, but it takes immense courage to put this information up to public, I’m VERY sensitive about my privacy and already have had bad experiences with having information about available to the public internet.
My humble ambitions to become a FULL TIME STEEMER
Also: As of now, I’m starting a fund to BECOME A FULL TIME STEEMER. My checklist is easy:New laptop: my current laptop is overheating and it’s extremely slow. I plan to buy an used Thinkpad in about 200€ range. Nothing fancy, just to write and browse Steem and use Photoshop.
Montly food costs: 100€ per month.
In an ideal world I would not have to post for monetary incentive, but unfortunately this is not an ideal world and I am by far not an ideal man. If by some miracle I'm actually able to make 350$ with Steemit this month then I'm definitely going to start saving all my Steemit incomes towards the upcoming Steemfest, which I'd absolutely love to participate!
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tl;dr - prison sucks, appreciate what you have.
Thank you for reading, I truly appreciate your time. Hope you have a fantastic day!