PTSD Recovery Expedition Day 3 – Disciplinary Segregation ( SHU )
Good morning, Just as we are all packed up and ready to head up to our Base Camp and set up our tents, and emergency shelter a dear friend of ours the one and only “Fozzy Bear”, stopped in for another quick Instagram photo.
As I stood and looked up to the beautiful trees, the sun shined warm and hell yeah our ruck sacks were full to the brim once again with the remainder of our Camping gear for this first leg of our expedition.
I am harshly reminded today of the situation our world is in, while all humans seem to be on this social distancing, isolation thing due to (in my opinion) a much bigger picture than a virus, and quite frankly so far out of human control it’s not something I am in any place to speak about nor really care to.
It was the morning after I had just been sentenced to 5 years in a Super Max Federal Prison for VGSCA, Possession of Cocaine. To be suspended upon deportation.
It would be safe to say, I was certainly not in a very good mood.
The breakfast line was being held up by Pretty Rickey as I stood about 40 inmates deep, I saw that he was pushing his tray back through the slot in the door complaining to the trustee that his bread was to small.
“Get your fucking tray and move on, lets go”, I yelled.
You could see the hair on the necks of the inmates in front of me stand on end, like a grizzly bears fur before they kill or feel they are in danger.
I’ll never forget the look on a few of the brothers faces who did turn around to see if this crazy white boy actually just said that, or perhaps this was a very bad dream, in reality , most certain death as the nightmare had only just begun.
Ya see, in jail or prison, when or if one man is ever to call you out, or make a scene, you had better be prepared to die for the cause … period.
I knew I had just made a very big mistake, pretty much the last mistake I would ever make and most certainly, by law , by code, not going to live to eat lunch.
You could see the men in front of me stand up a little more straight, knowing that it would only be a few more minutes before Pretty Rickey did what he had to do to keep his reputation if he were going to survive amongst his own, he had no choice now.
I however, didn’t even care at this point in my life, at the least I knew it would only be a matter of minutes before I could finally end this torturous way of life. It hasn’t been easy trying to survive in a over crowded Jail on the outskirts of Atlanta Georgia.
In a cell block built to house 120 inmates, we were sitting at just over 300, 85 % of them brothers, 10 % Mexican, and then there was all 6 of us crackers.
One wrong move, stare or blink of an eye, is most certainly a trip to the infirmary or sentence to die.
Up to this point in my life, i’ve now spent nearly 15 years in the streets of many cities across America and have hustled and banged with the best and the worst of them .. although I knew better than to flap my gums to Pretty Rickey, I also knew that I was capable of doing what needed to get done when light turns green.
Upon sitting down at the whitey table, not one of my own were very happy about it. Ol Pretty Rickey comes out of his cell , looks down at me from he tier above and shouts ” Yo Kosiko, why – don’t – yuh – mine – yo – own – muah fuckin – binness”?
I immediately stood up and shouted back, “here, you wanna bigger piece of fucking bread”, took the bread off my tray and threw it up at him. Before the bread even hit the wall only feet beside him, he took off down the stairs like a silver back gorilla.
Just as he stepped off the bottom step to completely crush my skull in, I had embraced his impact and gave him a quick hip toss onto our table. Booooom , breakfast trays went flying everywhere faster than every white boy at the table.
We had collided like to king crabs and went toe to toe fighting to the death.
As I sit here and write this I can see it and feel it as though i’m right there again, clear as day and am sick to my stomach this very minute just as we were at that point while fists were being thrown it was only a matter of seconds now, before I would die a quick, maybe painful and humiliating death. When ya live by the sword, ya die by the sword.
As we threw down, all I can remember most was clinching my teeth not worried about the fight itself, but waiting for the long sharp shanks to be put into my neck, my back, my gut, the side of my head, my eye , waiting for your throat to be slit any second, waiting for the bones to break, waiting for what I knew had to happen, by law.
It seemed like we battled for about 20 minutes, but it was probably only three minutes until the guards came in and broke it up. The next thing you know we were being led away. Pretty Ricky was bleeding, I had blood dripping down me, as we were cuffed up and off to D-SEG.
This was the jail inside the jail. I was now going to be subjected to disciplinary segregation, which is 24 hours a day locked down seven days a week— no visits, no phone, no store, nothing. Never had I ever even imagined such a place to exist on this earth. Every four days you got about 15 minutes for a shower and if the guards were in a good enough mood,or it wasn’t raining out they’d let you get some yard time. Don’t go thinking the yard means grassy knolls with flowers—this wasn’t that kind of yard. This was a 10 x 10 yard with 80 foot concrete walls and a cage on top— you barely got to see the light of day. And that’s only if you’re lucky. The rest of the time, you were in a little 6 x 8 cell with no window except a little 6-inch square piece of plexiglass on your door. The lights were on 24/7 and they had this constant little hum to them. People were constantly banging and banging and yelling and screaming and flooding out their cells. I’m talking thirty, forty men at one time all losing their minds. It was like going to an animal shelter where the most rabid of dogs are all barking back and forth constantly. Welcome to disciplinary segregation.
About four or five days into sitting in D-SEG, I was completely losing my mind but doing my best to stay focused on the moment—it was going to be okay, they were going to know that I was defending myself. I was holding onto just a little bit of hope that they were going to let me back out into population.
No. They slid a piece of paper under my door saying that I was sentenced to 30 days in the hole .
Welcome to the Psychological Torture Chamber.
This is when you begin pounding your fists on the walls. That’s when you begin banging your head against the concrete bunk. That’s when you look around for anything to slit your own fucking throat with. You can’t sleep—the last thing you want to do is sleep. Because when you sleep, you have a little bit of a dream of fresh air, the sound of a bird, the wind on your face, making love to your girlfriend, or just walking down the street. Then you wake up to the sounds of other men reenacting their crimes against the women that they’ve tortured. Those sounds still echo in my head.
You don’t even know what time it is and every minute seems like an eternity. When you’re sitting there you go back over all the years you spent feeding your addiction and committing crimes on the public and other gangs for absolutely no reason. All that hurt, all that guilt, all that shame sets in deeper and deeper with each breath. You see things and you hear things on top of all the screaming and the banging of grown men losing their minds— the screams, the blood and many tears. You feel the energy that is trapped in your nervous system from every single time you ran from the police, from every single time that you “touched” a trigger, from every single person that you’ve encountered in your years of running around aimlessly. You sit there with this. You don’t have a choice. You just do your best to try to change your mind to something else for the next second. You start to do push-ups but you don’t have the strength because of the weight of the pain and the shame that you carry.
By about my 20th day I was completely broken. The only thing that helped me hang on was the thought of moving up to the mountains of British Columbia—the fresh air, the trees, the lakes, the rivers, the animals— freedom to roam as I will.
I tried to envision myself helping the public, giving back to society for the 15 years that I had taken from it. I was going to join the other team— maybe I’d work search and rescue, maybe I’d be a paramedic, or maybe even a firefighter ?
What I have learned and find the most valuable now 22 years later in my personal recovery process is that in order to really “begin” and “continue’ to heal, I needed to find forgiveness and have gratitude for those to whom I used to place the blame for my own mistakes upon.
If I had one wish today, it would be to be better able to try and express or speak a language that was more comprehendible to understand the process and power of positive thinking. These pictures we share with you today on this expedition are the exact images that ran through my mind while sitting in that cell fighting for my sanity.
It was the constant thought and day dream of a better place, more free, and natural without the shackles and chains.
Not only is our recovery possible, it’s very much as real as your thoughts, it’s just not going to magically happen over night and I feel as long as it’s not financially driven and will help contribute to society and a better future for humanity, I believe and trust in your goals and dreams.
Thank you for your time and support today.
Your Friend, Our Voice
Terrance J. Kosikar