Freedom Promotions

I was discouraged by the lack of a grand moment of freedom at the end of my decade in prison. People imagine it as a dramatic shift— you live in a cell day after day, then one day, the door swings open, and life returns in glorious style. But that’s not how it works. A prison sentence has its own phases. You move from higher security to lower security, each step requiring its own adjustment. Then, if you're released to a halfway house or another form of monitoring, you're out, but not really free. Even from the time of my sentencing, I knew I’d have years of special parole waiting for me on the other side, an automatic way to ruin the best part of a long bid: the day I got out.

Looking back, though, I see it differently. I can track my growth through each stage and appreciate the small freedoms I gained along the way. I never had a single moment of freedom, I had freedom promotions. And while that realization surprises me, maybe it shouldn’t. After all, you get a lot stronger climbing a ladder than walking through a door.