Welcome to Concertina Wired!

Hello!

My name is Jayel. I am a justice-impacted, hearing impaired, neurodivergent, non-binary person of color currently housed in a men's state prison facility in Florida, United States of America. My pronouns aren't he/him, even as Florida says otherwise.

Age?

I'll decline to give an exact number in a public venue, but I can tell you I am definitely old enough to be the parent of someone old enough to legally consume alcohol here in America, were I to ever have chosen parenthood as a path.

My Back Story

I was adopted as an infant by my grandparents. I learned who my biological mother was at a young age, and never learned who my biological father was. In the latter case, nothing of value was lost. Such is the typical story of PoCs in my time -- "who's the father?" is an unanswerable question, but I never faced the tortures of kids in school teasing me over a lack of parents. (The few barbs of "Why's your daddy so old?" were at least met with "But I have a dad.")

From a very young age, I loved to read, and to sing. I got kicked out of naptime in kindergarten for waking people up, sent to our school's media center.

{Achievement Unlocked: Read ALL the Things!}

I was already reading above my grade level at that age, and unfettered access to all the books at my school just allowed me to take off like a rocket on reading more and more.

I ate a lot of Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizzas in Elementary School as a result of this (Thanks, Book It!).

I was also involved in the school chorus, at every school I went to, as well as the church choir once my folks felt I was mature enough to join.

Because my family were Missionary Baptist, I was baptised when they felt I was old enough, added to a religion I followed while the elder of two parents was alive.

I struggled with school as I got older, leaving the Gifted and Talented program as soon as I hit high school. Not because the work was difficult, but because I failed to see the utility of the assignments I was being given. You know... no engagement.

Present me knows that past me would have benefited from access to mental health specialists, who would likely have successfully diagnosed past me with a learning spectrum disorder, and maybe caught me at the leading edge of a depression spiral centered on self-loathing of this body.

Past me, however, got Dad.

You'll never amount to anything. You won't even finish high school.

How to press J's buttons, Old Man edition manual reads: tell J they can't or won't succeed at a goal.

I used that impetus to finish high school half a year early with more credits than I needed. A winner, it's me!

Still hate(d) my body, though.

I actually started college back then, but quickly washed out by burning the candle at both ends and melting it in the middle. School, Work, and Caring for a terminally ill person leaves no time for sleep until the Old Man passed on.

Eventually, I float on into being a little more myself, before spending a bout of time as a homeless person. It's okay, though: I got better. I learned how to stand up in a crazy world, to survive, and then to live.

I moved to the left coast of the USA, to a beautiful emerald of a city. It's no Oz, but it became home. I began to thrive out there as I learned more of how to adult.

What have I done?

Oh, a little of everything, as far as working is concerned! My strongest suits, though, are customer service and support, having done phone work for a multinational computer company and one of the nation's oldest consumer ISPs, chat support for one major mobile services provider and phone-based retentions for another, and wholehearted, glad support for a non-emergent medical transport and paratransit brokerage's clientele.

Is it any wonder that I thrive in a place where helping people is the norm, not the exception?

I'm doing this all with no college degree under my waistband (we do not get belts here); just a high school diploma I worked hard to get.

What is my hope?

To use my time constructively. I would like to take a paralegal certification course, and ultimately get my degree in Business Administration.

I also want to shed real light on how prison actually works behind the fences, with a minimum of politewashing: TV and Media have a habit of just showing groomed shots of spiffed up Visitation Parks, manicured front lawns, and their star inmate-resident, while being steered away from the dorm wings that reek of urine and synthetic marijuana, the tweakers zooted on ice, the old men left to fend for themselves against offenders so young they could be their great- or great-great grandchildren...

You know, the hidden truths behind the concertina wire and fences.

Hearken back: Faith?

Oh yes, I left off on that earlier.

My street life was apparently reasonably close to Buddhism without directly following it. Coming to Prison in Florida, to access religious diets, one must have a religion on file with the state.

So to that end, I am a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism!

Our facility has a small sangha (congregation) of Buddhist practitioners across a few schools (Soto Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren), as well as a small number of Siddha Yoga practitioners who we welcome with open arms and abundant compassion.

We are working to grow our materials access, to further our practice, and to politely educate our captors in appropriate treatment, believing firmly that karuna (compassion) also rolls down the hill, too -- better this than :poop:!

Thanks!

I give my thanks to everyone that has stuck by me during this sentence, to those of you who have joined me along the way, and those of you who are curious about the world behind the wires.

And finally, a special thanks to Melissa, who helps me share my thought stream to the world. She's a very sweet person. :)