by Hayden
It’s evening now, and other people are having visits with their families. To be honest, I’m really jealous. My family never comes to see me. They live so far away, in Seattle where I grew up. They felt compelled to get rid of me. It’s a pain I have been holding within for my entire life. They preach justice and practice lies and abandonment.
I think it’s messed up for the staff to hold visiting hours inside the unit where I have to watch. There is a separate visiting room, so why don’t they use it? The answer is ignorance. The staff and administration have no clue what it feels like for people like me to see another family hug, cry, and laugh together. I feel as if I’m floating around the room like a ghost, one that people only see and hear if they choose to.
I haven’t been in a strong family environment for several years. I barely know what it’s like to be loved in the familial sense. It’s easy to feel completely invisible, to lose my composure and wish that things were different. People may see that I’m struggling, but they don’t truly understand the depth of the reality of my situation. Most people don’t even ask questions. They just assume they can see the whole picture. That is ignorance, which in turn leads to my invisibility.
Much of the invisibility that I’ve experienced in my life is the fault of the justice system. Another portion is my fault, and the last piece of fault lies with my family.
Let me begin with myself. I used to be defiant and egotistical. So much so that it resulted in great friction between me and my family. My naturally stubborn personality didn’t help, either. But, even my own faults were the result of my then-buried, seething, and intermittent desire to be seen as a real person by my abusive father.
Growing up, my dad would rarely congratulate me for my successes. Instead, he would try to compete with me and make me feel stupid. On top of that, he devalued my talents and passions by physically trying to prevent me from pursuing them. In one instance, he tried to crush my dreams in one fell swoop of pride and ignorance. I had been a musician for several years. I was fourteen years old and I played the trumpet in jazz band. I gained the skill quickly and began to win awards from all-state and district solo and ensemble festivals. One evening, I came home and found my trumpet missing from my bedroom. My dad lied and said it was in the shop getting repairs. Later, I found a pawn slip that showed he’d sold my $600 trumpet for $112. Next to this slip was an $80 receipt from the liquor store. That evening ended in a beating. I left the house covered in blood, which literally froze to my skin in the cold November air. It was snowing in Seattle, so my bloody face and arms stood out against the white. That was the first night of what would be eight months of homelessness.
I was only fourteen years old. I still made it to school every day and got good grades, but my home life was practically nonexistent. All of this occurred just because I confronted my father that night. Ever since, he has failed to see how his actions affected me. Over the years, the pain has dulled enough for me to forgive him, but the memories are still very real.
Eight months after that fateful night, I naively took my father’s invitation to stay with distant relatives in Arizona for two weeks. I could have said no. I could’ve asked for help from social services. But, instead, I decided to get on that airplane alone and go to Arizona. This decision was the major turning point in my life.
I should have stayed put in Seattle and resisted my father’s manipulative attempts to destroy my sanity and individuality. My pleas for help were ignored. I was completely invisible.
The distant relatives treated me worse than my father did. I felt like Harry Potter, living in the cupboard under the stairs. Then, one day, after I realized that my father had lied to me and abandoned me, my relatives became violent. I was their scapegoat as well as their punching bag. They let my female cousin attack me. I had no good choices. If I let her do it, I was a wimp. If I defended myself, I was immoral.
Within two months, I became a ward of the state of Arizona. I was placed in foster care, away from the twisted and abusive relatives. I didn’t know that I had Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I didn’t know that my depression and anxiety attacks weren’t normal. I thought that everyone experienced blackouts at some point. My pastor had told me that mental illness was a myth. To him, psychology was a placebo. But I had serious problems that I needed help with, and I didn’t have access to that help. I felt like everything was my fault. Again, I was completely invisible.
I had been uprooted from my support system, my foundation in school, and my comfort zone. I had nothing to show from my old life but the clothes on my body and a pile of old certificates and awards. My track and field awards. My band awards. My academic awards. They taunted me. I could scream into the night but none but my silent demons would answer. Invisibility.
So, I burned it. All of it. I took a container with the awards and lit it on fire. In my symptomatic state, I had no control. A few days later, I woke up in an adult jail. I was fifteen-years old and was being charged with arson.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt in the fire. In fact, the damage was so minor that my fine was only $100 dollars, plus restitution. After the fees for carpet replacement and paint in the closet where I burned the papers, I ended up with a $4,000 bill. The downside was the jail time, the adult conviction, and the fact that I still wasn’t getting the help that I needed.
Jail was horrific. I was forced to wear the same socks and underwear for the entire seven-and-a-half month duration of my stay. There was no real supervision in my unit. The other inmates didn’t speak English. The jail was two miles from the border.
Many of the inmates were cartel mules. This means that they were forced to smuggle drugs into the United States to save their families from execution at the hands of either the Sonora or the Sinaloa Cartels. I felt bad for these people. Arizona didn’t care that some of them were as young as thirteen years old. Yes, one was thirteen! He was raped in that jail. Every single one of these men and boys went to prison. Adult prison. They were invisible to our own racist government.
I suppose one of the most difficult topics for me to discuss is my own physical and sexual abuse in that jail. Inmates would beat me until I learned to fight. They forcibly tattooed me three times. They sexually assaulted me. They flashed their genitals at me through my door window. The jail’s solution was to lock me in my cell and let them continue to expose themselves. My grievances fell on deaf ears. I was invisible.
After my release, I felt immensely relieved. I continued my education (which the jail had refused to provide). I ended up graduating from high school as a sophomore. I was sixteen years old. During my sophomore year, my school made it to the Arizona All-State Marching Band competition.
Tucson High School was a great experience. I eventually moved on to college, where I began to study computer science. (I used to take apart my father’s computer as a child.) I was happy to finally be around positive people in a positive environment. It all ended though. I still lived in foster care.
The group homes I lived in were terrible. I still have a human bite scar on my right shoulder from one altercation. On another occasion, the group home supervisor deprived me of my forty-dollars weekly food and supplies allowance for three weeks straight, all because of my busy college schedule and his spite at my efforts to be successful. I was never rude to him. I never did anything to deserve what he did to me.
I was forced to break curfew on several occasions to get food from my friends. I got in trouble for this, of course. I reported everything to my social worker via email, but she ignored my complaints. I got so tired of being treated like a package, that I got up and left. After a dangerous incursion into Mexico, I ended up in Los Angeles with a good job. I was still doing my college classes online.
When I had some time off from work, I decided to visit old friends and family in Seattle. I was arrested in Oakland during a layover at the bus station. I wasn’t being charged with anything new. The arrest was for a warrant in Arizona. So, I ended up in juvenile hall, fighting extradition.
The warrant had been issued because I’d left the state without permission. I fought extradition because my conviction was illegal and because they’d put me in an adult jail when I was fifteen (years old). I didn’t even realize I had violated my probation. Under Arizona law, my PTSD doesn’t qualify as a mitigating factor in my criminal case. Neither does my age when I committed the offense. I tried to change this. I represented myself in court, not by choice, trying to get the laws changed. This wasn’t just for myself, but for all of my incarcerated peers.
I’m tired of being viewed as a criminal. I’m tired of the government treating kids like we’re expendable. At my sentencing hearing, my judge said that my best interests were unimportant in the case. This is precisely the attitude that leads America’s youth to delinquency. This is why our adult jails and prisons are full of youthful offenders.
Now, I am no perfect man. I just want to be able to use my experiences to help my peers. If children are to succeed, then we need to matter. I can’t stress this enough. We are desperate to be looked upon with a trauma-informed and nonjudgmental eye. Retribution is a barbaric ideal that should have no place in our justice system. Retribution itself is forbidden to citizens, so why can the government exercise it as a tool destruction? I am challenging all of this in the US Supreme Court come next term.
My words alone cannot make things right. I can encourage people to stand up to injustice, but all I can do is plant that seed. It is up to society to water it and nurture it as it grows into a movement. This is why I am writing a book entitled Dear Society. It is my memoir, and it is dedicated to planting the seed of change in all its readers.
If I must continue to be digested by my own past, then I’m going to make certain it’s for a good cause. I would never trade the well-being of my peers for a chance to get my case thrown out. The people will always remain first in my heart.
Despite my incarceration, I’m still going to college. I’ve changed my major to sociology. After I receive my degree, I plan to go to law school. I want to become a federal civil rights attorney. My organization will be a nonprofit and will serve whoever is in need.
I suppose I’ve gone through these pains for a reason. As long as my peers are invisible, I will keep fighting. The bastards of bureaucracy can’t stop me. Our movement will succeed.