by JacobUnlimited

This is the first story in a Project Unlimited series titled: “Why do people wind up in prison?” Each story is written by an inmate at Tomoka Correctional Institution, not to justify or excuse behaviors, but for the purpose of educating and increasing awareness. You’re welcomed and encouraged to send questions for consideration for the Unlimited men to answer throughout this series. To learn more about Project Unlimited click here.

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There are a lot of reasons why people come to prison—poverty, mental illness, personal trauma, loss of control, or their environment. The push factors causing the recent rise of mass incarceration have been studied ad nauseam in recent years.

Now, I can’t tell you anything more than what those experts can. But what I can tell you is why I came to prison.

I was never a bad kid growing up. I followed the rules and never got into trouble. If anyone had asked my graduating high school class who, amongst the 300-some kids, would be incarcerated before their twenty-first birthday, most of the kids would have said, “Connor.” No one would have said Jacob.

Connor now lives peacefully in Hawaii while Jacob lives in prison, arrested shortly after his 20^th birthday, incarcerated since 2016. He will leave prison in 2029 and finish serving his entire sentence when he is fifty years old. No one attending the 2012 graduation would have bet on those odds.

Not even me.

But here I am. In prison. So if the question changed to ask why I came to prison, I would say it was because I stopped caring about myself and others. That, truly, was the root of my downfall.

Personal Trauma

Like others, I faced personal trauma growing up. That trauma intensified as I edged closer to my eighteenth birthday. At some point I became so used to it, so used to the mindlessness caused by my experiences, that I turned off the part of me that knew better. The part of me that was the “good” person my parents raised me to be. In a way, it was to escape what I was living through.

I never sought help to address my issues, even though I knew that help was available, and that I was suffering from severe depression. I never sought it because I was too afraid to face my trauma, my fears, and to expose the parts of myself that I had hidden away. It was so much easier to continue being the good person by day so that other people wouldn’t think twice about me, so they wouldn’t know the pain I felt. When they were gone, I fled from that reality, the one where I had to juggle the happy face with the feelings of despair and distress. And when I ran away, I stopped caring about myself. I just wanted to make the hurt go away. When I ran away, the unending emptiness that permeated my reality was boxed away, for a time.

But it was always there when I returned, as if asking me whether I was done running and ready to face it head on.

Double Life

I am sickened by the crimes I committed. I understand why I caused harm to others even while I was attempting, for however brief, to escape those very harms. But if I had cared about myself, if I had stopped leading a double life and opened up to others, exposed myself and my flaws, my hurts, my anger at the world, I would not have committed my crimes.

My crimes were the result of my inability to care for myself, to deal with reality. My crimes allowed me to have an unhealthy outlet to distract me from my problems. But when the door blew open, exposing my deeds, I could no longer pretend that everything was all right. That I was all right.

I came to prison because I failed to take care of myself, committed crimes to ignore my reality, and was unable to address my issues. I am where I am today because I couldn’t say, “I need help.”