FEDERAL PRISONER NO. 79282-079

- The Holidays -

The alarm on my cheap 10-year old wrist watch is going off. It's 5:45 in the morning. The intermittent clacking sound has already started, as one of the prison guards is unlocking the 52 cell doors keeping us in. So far, I've experienced the same sound for 7,753 days, causing it to habitually become part of my early daily routine, with the only difference that today happens to be 'Thanksgiving Day'. My twenty-first one.
Out of all the Holidays of the year, with the exception of Christmas, we are all afforded a special meal. It is comprised of a turkey-leg and breast, a small piece of pecan pie, and watermelon. And since we're having a special meal for lunch, we're only fed a small bowl of non-sugar dry cereal and a small carton of milk for breakfast.
Let truth be told, I wish I was having something different. But you don't get to eat what you want in prison; You have to basically adapt to whatever you are fed: plenty of pasta and processed food.
As soon as the prison guard unlocks all of our cell doors, I literally run to the showers trying to be the first one there; But by the time I get there, there's already three inmates waiting in line. On special days, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, many of us who have been in prison for decades-on-end have adopted a customary practice: to get up early, take a shower, and dress up in our new sport sweat suits and new tennis shoes purchased from the prison commissary. The ones we keep put up in our lockers for occasions such as these. In a way, we want to subconsciously feel like a normal human being celebrating the Holidays, even if, in the end, it just turns out to be an illusive creation of our imagination.
Soon we are all eating dry non-sugar cereal in the mess hall, and I hear other inmates next to me complain about the breakfast, how cold it is outside, and how they aren't going to receive any visits from family members or be able to call them due to lack of funds. By this time I've gotten used to such complaints. Well, maybe not so much, for at times I've found myself participating in them.
About a week ago, I received an e-mail from Ms. Sarah Gersten. She is asking me to share my experience of being in prison for the Holidays, via a letter about my life as a prisoner during the time. I have received this same request from others during the Christmas season. Others simply want to know what it's like to be in prison during this time. I don't mean to sound sarcastic or pessimistic, but why would anyone want to know how someone feels in this horrid environment-- place that slowly corrodes your self dignity and self-worth. A place that forces you to suppress your emotional longings and causes you to detach yourself from reality, numbing your feelings and appreciation for life. If it wasn't because of my spiritual devotion to something greater than my circumstances, I believe I would have already taken my own life, or gone mad, as I have seen others do.
Last Christmas was one of the worst for me. I was unable to see my mom because she had suffered a heart attack, and has been unable to travel to come see me. I couldn't see my three sons, whom through every passing Christmas have become more distant to the point that I rarely speak to them. Now they are in their mid-twenties, leading a life of their own, oblivious to the fact that I was ever their father; And who can blame them? Not me. For I was never there for them growing up.
I don't know what this Christmas is going to feel like. And it's not so much the endless deprivation of my liberty that will probably distress me, or the hopeless expectation to want to receive a visit from my family, but it is more of an inner desire to want to feel like a normal human being, having the freedom of choice of what to eat, where to go, and who to spend Christmas with.
Many people don't know that Christmas in prison can be callous, violent, and depressing. There are no decorations or Christmas trees. There are no presents to give or receive. There is no family affection from your loved ones. No smiles to reflect back.
A lot of the inmates will be smoking more K2 and ingesting more suboxen than usual, trying to escape the reality of their present misery; while others will spend the time telling stories about what their life could've or should've been out in society; while still others will try to busy themselves exercising, cleaning their cells, or reading books to exhaustion, so that they can later sleep through Christmas day and the Holidays, and then return to the monotonous routine of sameness in the month of January; to the very existence of the dullness of our every day life, repeated over and over for what seems like eternity. For I believe that's when we feel the most comfortable, for we do not have to think so much about the people we miss and love.
The only thing I can look forward to is the Christmas meal, but ironically enough that's also subject to change - most often towards the worse. This is something rather common in prison. Just a few minutes ago, I learned from one of the inmates who works in food service that the turkeys we were supposed to be fed, have spoiled. An officer inadvertently put them in the wrong refrigerator, the day prior, at the wrong temperature. I don't know if this was deliberately done, but then again nothing surprises me anymore in this place. So no turkey for Thanksgiving.
As we slowly make our way towards food service (two hours later than usual, for the officers had to find a replacement meal) I hear the murmurs and complaints from the other inmates. And who can blame them? We are routinely obliged to accept the way things are, desperately wondering when our life is going to change for the better. Or better yet, when the surprising news will come to tell one of us that we are actually being released from prison. For some, that time does not come soon enough, as for others that time will never come, because they will eventually die in prison due to the long and harsh sentence they have received.
I don't want to sound like a victim myself. Far from it. But as prison reformers are adamantly crying-out to the ruling bourgeois: "Let the time fit the crime", does not necessarily apply to me, for some reason.
So during these Holidays, the only thing I can do is depend on my faith in God and to the devotion of the spiritual process of Christmas telling me what these Holidays mean. I will imagine that I am free. I will imagine that all of this suffering shall pass soon enough, praying that with each passing Christmas, until 2033, the day of my release, I will not end up damaged goods - due to the horrific and oppressive weight of hopelessness I seem to endure on a constant basis. A prison experience which routinely tries to eradicate my self dignity and self- worth. Happy Holidays.

Edwin Rubis is a non-violent marijuana offender serving 40 years in federal prison for conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

Edwin Rubis
Reg. No. 79282-079
FCI-Talladega
PMB 1000
Talladega, AL 35160
You Can Text Me: (513) 842-8766