Speaking out didn’t make everything easier. If anything, it made some things harder.
Some days, I could feel the weight of the world pressing down on me even more. Not just the weight of having an uncle behind bars, but the weight of expectations—from myself, from others, from the system.
I quickly learned that not everyone wanted to hear my story.
Teachers who had once seemed supportive gave me vague looks or changed the subject when I brought up the parole board or the prison system. Their silence felt like a wall—one made of discomfort, fear, or maybe indifference.
Classmates whispered behind my back, calling me “the prison kid” like it was a label I’d been branded with at birth. Some looked at me with pity, others with suspicion, like I carried the mistakes of my uncle on my own shoulders. It was a reminder that the stigma of incarceration didn’t just live inside prison walls—it followed families like a shadow.
Even family wasn’t always a safe place. Some relatives told me I should be careful. That some wounds were better left closed. That the system was too big, too broken, and I was just one kid who couldn’t change it. Their words cut deep, but they also hardened my resolve.
Because if silence had put my uncle there, then silence wasn’t going to be what got him out.
So I kept speaking.
And then—one day—the news came that felt like a crack in the impossible: the parole board had agreed to a hearing. It wasn’t a promise of freedom. It wasn’t a guarantee. But it was a chance to be heard.
Hope and fear tangled inside me like a storm. Hope that maybe, finally, the system would see my uncle as a person, not a number. Fear of what freedom might mean. Would he find a world that had moved on without him? Would he be ready? And if he wasn’t, what then?
Our conversations shifted again.
He stopped talking as much about survival behind bars and started talking about the future—the one neither of us could fully see yet.
He told me about the guilt that still clung to him, heavier than any chain. About the mistakes he’d made and the family he’d hurt. About the fear that even if he walked out of those gates, he might still be trapped—by stigma, by memories, by the life waiting for him beyond the walls.
I felt it all—the pain, the hope, the uncertainty. And I realized something I hadn’t before: I was carrying not just his story, but his fears too.
That’s when I learned the hardest lesson—how to protect my own heart without turning away from his pain. How to hold space for his struggles without losing myself. How to be strong for both of us.
And I wasn’t alone.
Slowly, I found the others—families who knew this fight all too well. Activists who’d spent years fighting a broken system. Counselors who held the hands of people like us every day.
In their voices, I heard my own pain reflected back—but also something new: strength born from shared struggle.
Together, we were more than just isolated stories. We were a community. A movement. A ripple against a system that thrives on silence and isolation.
Through them, I found hope that felt bigger than just my uncle, bigger than just my family.
And through it all, I started to see my own path more clearly.
The words I wrote. The speeches I gave. They weren’t just acts of defiance against a broken system. They were steps toward who I wanted to be—a person who turns pain into purpose, who fights not just for survival, but for justice.
At times, it’s exhausting.
At times, the depression still creeps in, whispering that I’m not enough, that this fight is too big, that freedom might never come.
But then I remember that visit—the hug that changed everything. The patience in his eyes. The belief he had in me when I didn’t even believe in myself.
The fight isn’t over.
The parole board hasn’t made its final decision.
The world outside still doesn’t always understand.
But I’m not waiting in silence anymore.
I’m speaking.
I’m fighting.
I’m building a life where hope isn’t just a crack of light behind walls—it’s the road ahead.
Because now, more than ever, I believe:
One day, he’s coming home.
No comments:
Post a Comment