i am lonely.
all the people i know
i know too well – Carolyn Rogers

Yesterday I received an extraordinary e-mail from a woman whose partner is incarcerated. I’ll call her Tina. I haven’t asked for permission to quote the e-mail so I won’t do so here. I want to talk instead about Tina’s general argument. She was responding to my latest post about loss being a critical component of the incarceration experience. She suggested that I was correct but that I should couple loss with loneliness. As I read her words, I thought “yes, that’s right LONELINESS.” Loss and Loneliness – for those on the inside but also for those on the outside too.

Michael Smith, a guard at Attica prison who was held as a hostage in 1971 during the rebellion, offered these words recently:

“I think that prison not only locks inmates away from society but also locks society away from inmates. People don’t pay attention to what’s going on in prisons. We think it’s not an issue if it’s locked away. They don’t think about how much its costing society in other terms.”

The costs of incarceration are in fact high. But in some ways, they are immeasurable, incalculable… How does one quantify grief, anger, and loneliness? We cannot.

I want to offer some words of support to Tina. I want to tell her that I sympathize with her plight. But I am finding that the words won’t come. The ones I have seem inadequate, too small somehow to convey the depth of my feelings. When I have a difficult time finding the words that I need, I often turn to poetry.

I have not had a partner who has been incarcerated. I have however been lonely, I have felt alone. I have felt misunderstood. I have felt not understood. Those aren’t the same things… I opened this post with lines from Carolyn Rodgers’ “Poem for Some Black Women.” Rogers is one of my very favorite poets and “Poem for Some Black Women” illustrates loneliness in a way that I cannot:

“when we laugh,
we are so happy to laugh
we cry when we laugh
we are lonely.
we are busy people
always doing things
fearing getting trapped in rooms
loud with empty…
yet
knowing the music of silence/hating it/hoarding it/loving it/treasuring it
it often birthing our creativity
we are lonely”

Tina, you see, other people understand being lonely too. I have been there. Shrinking myself to try to conform to others’ expectations of me, for me. So many of us have felt alone in a crowd too. Here again Rogers is instructive:

“we grow tired of tears we grow tired of fear
we grow tired but must al-ways be soft and not too serious…”

You are told to be “strong” for your daughters. How annoying that must be. Considering you ARE being “strong.” You are working. Working hard to keep it together. You feel invisible in your accomplishment.

Michelle Clinton wrote a poem called “For Strong Women” which has a lot of resonance for me and I hope for you too. Here’s a section of the poem:

“I have needed some one to be kind to me,
like a sad, sad, misty & gray dream,
my hand outreached, waiting,
yet not believing I deserve anything…
For those simple times,
when I cannot take care of myself…
What?
What do we do?
What do you do?
WHAT CAN BE DONE
to ease the fear
& growing self-pity
(LIGHT A CANDLE/READ A BOOK/TAKE A LONG HOT BATH MASTURBATE OR SMOKE A DOOBEE/TAKE A LONG HOT BATH)

Wait.
And tomorrow when there are people to comfort you,
or you find those damned keys,
Return to the same well versed competent woman you are.
Hold your head up.
Breathe deeply.
Return to your life unmarred, recovered and complete.”

Tina, thank you for your e-mail, for your outstretched hand. I reach back to you and offer mine and Carolyn Rogers’ too.

“we know too much
we learn to understand everything
to make too much sense out
of the world,
of pain
of lonely…”

I hope that you learn to make less sense of the world, of pain, and of lonely. I hope that you heal. Peace to you.