I didn’t do it. I know all convicts cry the exact words, but I speak truth. I am innocent, yet they stole my life and yanked it away. They locked me in a cold, heartless jail cell.-always surrounded by negativity and angry people. They erased my life. I bare the name of a criminal.
But the lack of touch hurts the most and stabs me to my core.
I didn’t know I was going to jail until they stormed my home and locked me away. It came as a complete surprise. I rocked on the front porch that day, eating peaches and cream with Gramma. As the sun set and the toads croaked their lovely melodies, I felt Heaven had planted itself in my yard.
I had a simple boyhood dream to become a husband and a daddy. You see, I didn’t have a daddy. I grew up on the hard streets, watching how crime sucked in my brothers like a vortex.
I hated the streets. The streets took my daddy. They claimed my mom.
Gramma took me home, taking the role of daddy and mom. The day they arrested Mom, Gramma wrapped me in a blanket and held me tight, and she never stopped holding me. Man, I get teared up right now talking about Gramma. -no woman out there greater.
As you see, I didn’t need the street to fill my empty hole. Gramma did that, and Reverend Mike.
Reverend Mike showed me what a daddy looked like. He picked me up and flung me around the house in wrestling matches, just like his boys. I’d planned to grow up like Reverend Mike, filling my walls with love and touch. Oh, and I would have four walls and property. I wouldn’t raise my boys near a project like I had been.
I got a job at thirteen to start saving for my house. Reverend Mike let me scrub the church on Sundays, and I cleaned the daycare each night. When I was sixteen, Po-daddy brought me to his restaurant as a busser, and I moved my way to the dishwasher, then cook. I saved every cent for my future.
I didn’t reckon I would go to college because I needed my savings for my house, but Reverend Mike gave my name to an anonymous donor who paid for my schooling and living expenses. Oh, man, forgive me for crying. My heart still warms for that opportunity. Imagine some stranger having faith in me.
IN ME!
After graduation, I bought my house!
I got my degree in social work to help lost boys like myself. But I did something I shouldn’t have. I cared too much. I let one of the boys, Chris, into my personal life.
Chris seemed like a good kid who just had a crap plate dealt to him. I moved him in for ninety days so he could get his act together. Chris did fine here. We had no problems, but I couldn’t believe how popular that boy was. He had people over all day at all hours. I was naïve. I just thought they were chilling, and I was proud I gave them a place to hang away from the street. But Chris secretly used my home as his dealing hub, and I didn’t know it.
My home!
My lifetime accomplishment.
Chris got on his feet real fast. I guess drug money can do that for you. He moved out after forty days. I was proud of him, not realizing he had set himself up with drug money.
Drug money he made as he lived in my home.
After Chris moved out, I married my sweetheart Brittany, and three months later, we were pregnant with twins! I bawled for two days straight. Everything I dreamed had happened. Life was beautiful. I just needed Gramma to move in, and then it would be better than what Heaven above had to offer. But she declined.
The drive-by that put three bullet holes in Gramma’s walls changed her mind. When she walked through the doors of her new home, I wrapped Gramma in a blanket, just like she had to me, and I held her all night long.
I had a blissful life. And there we basked in each other’s company on the porch. I rocked between Gramma and Brittany, holding both their hands when those damn police showed up.
They ripped me away from my woman. They made my Gramma watch her grandson get arrested.
I didn’t know what they searched for as they ransacked my home. They threw me in the slammer even though they didn’t find anything.
They took my liberty.
My life.
My hope.
I tried to stay optimistic. I knew I would go home soon. How could I not? I had done nothing wrong in my life. Ever!
And yet, they sentenced me to life in prison. Just in case you missed that, let me repeat it. LIFE IN PRISON!
I later learned that Chris got caught dealing. He made a plea bargain with the Feds and name-dropped me. He said I was the kingpin and sold drugs out of my house. MY HOUSE! The house I had saved since I was thirteen to buy. That boy, the boy I brought into my home and gave everything to, he dropped my name to save his.
They found no physical evidence to convict me. I had clean ledgers with a paper trail of savings accounting for every pure dollar that went into my account. Yet, those bastards sentenced me to life on charges of conspiracy. Conspiracy charges do not require hard evidence. I did nothing wrong. I could not defend myself against hearsay. They took my home and dumped my wife and two babies in the gutter. They threw Gramma on the street.
I thought I had lost everything the day they locked me up. But five years later, my wife divorced me and remarried. I don’t blame her. She couldn’t raise two boys all by herself. And yes, you heard right. God gave her boys. Boys I was supposed to raise. Those were my boys. Yet, despite the life I would have given them, they were left without a daddy. Brittany remarried to provide them with a daddy. I hold her no ill will.
The same day Brittany remarried; Gramma died. I don’t think her heart could handle what Brittany did to me.
So, here I rot thirteen years later, and it is all gone. My boys live across the country. Occasionally they write me, but they don’t see me as daddy. How could they? I was never there for them.
It has taken me twelve years to come to peace. I gave my life to Jesus last year, and He healed my heart. He has taken the anger. There is no point in holding all that poison in my heart. It won’t bring any of my dreams back to me. It only made my hell more unbearable.
Amiss all that I have lost, I miss touch the most.
Since Brittany stopped bringing herself and Gramma in, I have not been hugged for eight years.
EIGHT YEARS without a loving touch. Oh, I get touched in here. I’ve been hit, kicked, spit on, and stabbed. I get pushed almost daily. But no one has given me a loving touch in eight years.
I am like a flower, wilting without water, barely alive, withered to nothing. I am an empty shell of a life without a spirit dwelling inside. I have become accustomed to prison life, with its routines and familiarities. I don’t say I like it, but I have acclimated.
But I need touch.
I crave touch.
I long for a soft embrace.
Yes, I miss my wife, Gramma, and home. But I gave that pain to Jesus. So now, it isn’t the thought of spending the rest of my life without freedom that scares me. With Jesus, I can do it. I have the library here. I teach classes to other inmates. I have my niche.
But please, Oh Lord, please, let someone touch me. Don’t make me go the rest of my life without one more caress. Don’t let me live without one more hug.
What I would do for touch.
____________________________________________________________________
Eight Years Without a Hug
by Stephanie Daich
