Letters Home

November 3, 2011   Jackson Michigan/M.D.O.C. Parnell
Hello Sweetheart,        
       I am so happy to get your letters and the photos you send. My days are sparked with the anticipation of receiving your letters. I feel like it's my birthday and you have planned a big party with all of my closest friends- though so few they may be. 
      The idiots I am surrounded with here in prison make me work at applying myself to learning like you wouldn't believe. Every book that is about something real, jumps into my hands like magic. My uncomfortable bunk becomes tolerable- burying myself in reading and taking in information. I have read about the Life and Times of Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, discarded Bill Clinton's autobiography because I felt that he probably didn't really write it but I read Colin Powell's autobiography. Did you know he his family are from Jamaica? 
     My writing has also been keeping me very busy. The novel about my life after the accident is coming along pretty well. I write really small and get about nine hundred words on a page! My hand cramps often but the enthusiasm I have keeps me driving onward with it. I have been trying to take every minute back that they have taken from US. So far, I have been at it for the past three months. 
     It's too bad I wasn't there for the Halloween activities. I look at the pictures you sent of Cleo in her costume and my heart aches. It breaks my heart to see our daughter less than enthusiastic about the Halloween fun. I can barely see a spark in her heart. She has no smile. Even though I'm just "Pat" to her, I know if I was there she would be happy but it would only mask her pain. I can see that her spirit is being crushed by her own daddy and it hurts me to see, and to know that I am causing her pain too. This prison sentence is on top of the pain she already bears, only to compound the guilt that I have. You need to try to put on a happy face to help carry her through this until I come home to you again. Only then can I remove the weights that are preventing her spirit from soaring.
     She is my last chance at helping shape someone for their future; to send them off with all of those things that I think a person will need to do a just and righteous thing in the future- something unselfish and beneficial to many, if not her own. She needs to be prepared properly and sufficiently in order to be successful enough to take care of herself, and hopefully us when we no longer can. 
     I see my own children and my hopes are lost to have relationships with them again, as we had before their mother separated them from me- emotionally detached and self consumed. And even though Char is doing great and has a good future ahead with the United States Air Force, and Annie is working and going to college, I have only a simple hope that time will heal these wounds that we share, and we will be brought together again. 
    As for Roy, at this point, as I watch what he is doing to himself, I can't hope for anything more than for him to survive.
    Cleo is my reef to anchor onto with what's left of my yearning for the identity I had as a Father. She is what makes everything okay, as if everything else was just a bunch of prep courses to be able to give to her.
    I have to go now. I am getting upset because all I have of us is a paper with writing on it, and nothing in the way of us but this time that I can only conquer day by day with my efforts at rebuilding myself. I am eating every rotten, chemically saturated, moldy piece of food they give us. Working out is a daily routine- at least an hour with the weights, and a good walk. And then all the other time I keep my pencils and papers in hand to separate me from everyone else. Out of 1600 men here and the 3200 faces, I have only three people I can have a real conversation with. I have never felt more lonely in a crowd as I am now. BUT at least I can better recognize my enemies. I am ashamed to admit it but I had no idea how bad of a state that men are in. We are in serious trouble in the world. The programming of idiots seems like it's been a capitol effort, and what a job that has been done. I have never been more filled with disgust. Thank God for Authors.
   Jen, I love you very much. Know that I am working hard and we will all be laughing again soon. Give the kiddo a big hug for me.
Your Sweetheart,
Pat