I’ve been feeling down lately. Not as much as I have in the past. Depression seems to come in waves, each a different height and length. Depression while incarcerated is something I came to know about seven years ago, when I was introduced to the criminal legal system.

I don’t want to mislead you into thinking I’ve never been sad before. Sadness for me is something else. It’s different, partly because of how I can move through it. There’s a sense of control I have over feeling sad or not. Depression is enduring. It’s weight on me. It’s like a jacket made of stinking thinking, and all I want to do is take it off. But I can’t. It goes where I go.

In the past, when I got sad or unhappy about something in life, I thought about it, discovered exactly what made me unhappy, then I’d plan and do whatever I could to make tomorrow better than today.

I take the same approach when I’m depressed. One of the differences I’ve noticed is that when I was sad, I was sad about one thing. I could easily pinpoint it. I’d know exactly what it was. When it comes to my jacket of stinking thinking, I don’t have that luxury. It’s not one thing causing the trouble. It’s most of the life I’m experiencing.

Noise. People so close to me that their arm hairs tickle my arms. Arguments. Fights. People stabbing people. Being hungry. Wanting choice. Not being able to breathe clean air. Not being able to take a mental break. Waiting for showers. Being treated less than. Worrying about life when I get out. How will my relationship be with my children? Will I be allowed to do this? Will I be allowed to do that? Knowing that my life will forever be under a microscope.

My mother is dead. She died and I was here. No goodbyes, no final look, no last touch of her hand.

I can’t escape this stinking thinking jacket. I don’t want to smell it. So I run. I take action. I plan and do whatever I can to make tomorrow better than today. While in motion, the stinking thoughts don’t catch me — not as easily. The wind keeps them behind me. But when I slow down, when the lights go out and I’m lying in my bunk alone with the sound of voices from NPR running through my headphones, I become enveloped once again by the smell of my thought jacket.

At night, in bed — a position I used to share with my significant other, where I used to feel loved and that all was well — is now replaced with never-ending thoughts that depress me.

Xavier Lee of Elkton, MD

“Mizz Debbie’s Boy”