Life’s a beach?

I feel like I am running out of things to say. Sometimes I look around me at the other people I share this place with, and I don’t even want to write anything about being here. I am sick and tired of people who want to bully others because they are weaker or because they are nicer. The people here are very disrespectful of each other. Some days it’s harder than others to just let all this bullshit flow over me and not affect me.

I have a friend in here who is paroling out any day, and then getting deported because he is in the country illegally. I don’t care about that. All I know him as is my cellie in here, and he is a good guy. His story is he comes from a small town in the far southern part of Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca, where he and his family were all farmers. He grew up a lot poorer than most of us can imagine. When you are poor there, it’s not like here. His life was pretty drastically different there than what it’s like here, and he came here with just an idea of what it would be like, and thinking he could make money and make it good here. “The American Dream”, right?

He got here when he was a young guy, and at that time he had never even driven a vehicle or drank alcohol. He got a labor job and lived with several other guys in an apartment, and for awhile it was pretty good because he was making money and experiencing a bunch of stuff he had never done. He was in a pretty big city and living a life that was way different than what he had grown up with. Then he went out one night with some other guys, drank some beer and got arrested driving home.

He was sentenced to a couple years in prison for a DUI and now he is going to be released and brought to the border and dropped off on the Mexican side. He has never received any commissary since being here because nobody from his family knows where he is and even if they did they wouldn’t have money to send him or know how to send it. I don’t know if illegal immigrants get the $50 when they get released like I hear we do, but if he does, that won’t buy him a bus ticket to his home state. He has told me he is scared that he won’t be able to get home, and from the reports on the news lately, he is scared he will get caught up in the mess with the narcotraficantes and be forced to work for them or killed or something. He doesn’t know what will happen once they drop him off across that bridge and it’s worrying him.

We work out together and we talk. He is hoping he can make it back home and he is looking forward to seeing his brothers again, but his parents are passed on. He hopes he can go back to making a living farming again and that looking back on it he misses that simple life. It seems like in his case the American dream turned into a terrible nightmare.

I can’t imagine being here in prison without ever receiving a letter from anyone or ever being able to buy a package of soup or tuna or a bag of chips or some shampoo or deodorant. All kinds of things might have happened with his family in this time and he has no idea. I try to share some of my commissary with him from time to time. Among all the men in here, he is truly humble and just keeps to himself for the most part. I am going to miss his friendship when he leaves, and he is a good workout partner, but I am glad he will be free and not sitting here in prison. I hope he can make it all the way back to his home town somehow.

Maybe we will meet again someday, under better circumstances. I told him when I am out and get done with my parole I want to take a trip down there and look him up. He says where he lives is really nice, tropical, and it’s not far from the beach. Well, on days like this it’s a lot better dreaming about being on a tropical beach than it is dealing with these guys in here who think they are such bad-asses but are really just asses.

Peace ~ Magnum