Breaking Free from Shame and Manipulation: An Experience of Resilience and Hope in Shawshank

We experience shame subconsciously; we obscure shame, and it presents itself only in the peripheral manner we conduct ourselves, others see the limited, roundabout ways we endeavor to suppress that shame. Unless of course, we choose to acknowledge the behaviors that develop into shame. Acknowledging the behaviors that might become shame releases us from emotional weights that take hold and exploit us, our purviews, interactions, and personal growth. It can be one of the most difficult things we do emotionally not only because it's uncomfortable but because we bury it as deeply as possible and never think of it again, despite its lasting effect on us. There’s a dark period of my life that’s weaved throughout my emotional and psychological responses and reflections, the shame I feel about this period is loosely associated with scattered happenings during this time, but my real shame is reflected in the fact that I allowed myself to get into the situation in the first place.

For instance, one incident that I’ve been particularly afflicted by, at least with how it comes across to others (I’ve since reconciled its effect on me, emotionally), is that I spent four nights and five days in the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility. The ordeal was unconventional for me; for some, their lifestyle might be closely parallel to the kind of, I don’t know… dynamic, however for me the experience was shockingly uncharacteristic but exceptionally eye-opening. My ex-wife harbors deep emotional anguish. I’m not sure where it comes from exactly, it’s probably the aftereffect of assorted traumas stacked and layered throughout her life. She hasn’t and doesn’t manage or acknowledge it, and it consumes her and presents as irrepressible rage. It's chilling to witness, especially when you’re the focus of the disobedient eruption of emotional discord. Nearly every evening for years she lashed out; things were not good (*before I continue, let me reassure some of you who are now wondering if I killed her and buried her body in the backyard under our pear tree—I didn’t; she is alive and well, remarried and again divorced (for the sixth time), and looking for her next life to ruin).

One evening, while we were enjoying a quiet night by the fire in our wonderful two-bedroom home, south of downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico she had an episode. We were years into our relationship by then and I had been manipulated, trapped, and reduced to a deadened shell of a person. When she would lose control, I went even more numb than the counterfeit role of a human that I played in public. On this night, while she raged on, I walked into the kitchen, grabbed a knife from a wooden knife block, locked myself in our primary bathroom, and desperately tried not to cut my wrist. Sobbing, I opened the bathroom door and grabbed the phone on the bedside table (the phone happened to be hers), and I called the police. I'm not sure how much time passed, but when I unlocked the bathroom door it opened to several guns pointed directly at me. I don’t know exactly what was communicated between my ex-wife and the police before they found me in the bathroom with surface-level cuts on my wrist, but I do know most of what she told them wasn’t true. I’ll come back to that later.

Afterward, I was led outside, they cuffed my wrists together and behind my back, and placed me in the back seat of a squad car; the rear window was open, and the cool mountain air was refreshing and accented the dried tears coating my cheeks. Two uniformed officers stood outside the window inventorying potential charges like they were playing a turn-based trivia game. I was listening but at that moment their words were gibberish, incoherent vocabulary that made little sense to me. I stared out the window, watching the lights stream in the night like a timelapse video stripping the minutes and hours away from the moment. We stopped at Christus St. Vincent Medical Center, they put me in a room, cuffed me to the bed, and pumped who knows what medicines into my system, while an armed guard stood outside my door all night. The following morning, I was put in the back seat of a squad car again, and this time we drove to the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility. I was booked, and given an orange jumpsuit and a toothbrush, I stood on many white and yellow lines and was herded between several rooms. Each room was nearly identical to the last. Cinder blocks filled in with concrete and painted either white or grey, everything was coarse, the floors, the walls, and the ceilings. Lightbulbs of light jutting from the walls, bright and artificial; sometimes, light appeared to be coming from everywhere, bright and artificial.

Another one of the rooms was the correctional facility psychiatrist who explained to me that inmates who are a suicide risk are placed in a solitary room with nothing, no mattress, sheets, blankets, pillows, clothing, toothbrushes, nothing; they took everything they had just issued me away and gave me a ‘turtle suit.’ A turtle suit is a padded shell that wraps around your body and is fastened at the shoulders with Velcro, only the Velcro is so worn it doesn’t adhere. The room seemed made of a single sheet of metal: the bunk, toilet, sink, and scuffed mirror were welded together as one; cold, everything was always cold. Warmth is a luxury. The cell door seemed less a door and more a soldered slab with a slender, long window probing a white, clinical hallway with several soldered slabs and windows in the psychiatric wing of the Santa Fe Adult Correctional Facility. I should have been adrenaline-fueled and panic-stricken, but I wasn’t. I was at peace. That night was the first night in years I felt I had my emotional freedom back, despite being robbed of my corporeal freedom.

The following morning, I was interviewed again by the correctional facility’s psychiatrist. I was cleared of being a suicide risk, honestly, I was never really a suicide risk (I don’t think). I was discharged from the psychiatric wing and processed into a cell block. There was overcrowding in the facility, so my block had been integrated with some of the more hardened inmates, many were awaiting a transfer to prison. I was led into the block through a single-soldered slab, and the massive room opened into a community space. There were metal tables welded to metal stools, communal showers to the left rear of the community space, a television hung high on the wall, and two rows of cells in the back adjacent to the communal showers, one row of cells on top of the other, and a single stairwell along the side of the wall to the right of the main entrance leading to the second row of cells. I was put in a cell with another inmate, he quickly gathered his things and moved—thank goodness, the thought of sharing a cell with anyone in that situation was unthinkable. My cell was slightly more homely than my suicide room but similar; I had a mattress, sheets, blankets, a pillow, and a toothbrush at least. I also had a metal table and a stool welded to the opposite wall from the metal bunks.

Nonetheless, I slept very well again that night. I woke up early. A cell block and cell are eerily tranquil in the early morning. The dim artificial light of the facility was flat and indifferent. I sat on the stool waiting but for what I didn't know. Eventually, the main entrance slab opened, and a guard pushed a cart in. Through my cell window, I watched the guard platting breakfast onto plastic trays, with food spilled into the drawers. The more hardened inmates lined up to grab their trays first, they ate and the rest of us were herded out and lined up to collect our breakfast. I wanted to sit alone but I didn’t want to sit alone. I’m not sure how, but I knew it was important for someone else to know my story, it seemed dangerous for me to allow them to make their own stories about why I was there. I sat with another man who was sitting alone. He was in his fifties, he had shaggy black hair and a short salt and pepper beard, he had kind eyes and a soft speaking voice. I never asked why he was there, but he was a comforting source of relief.

Meanwhile, it was my second morning at the facility and though I still felt a degree of emotional freedom I was beginning to wake up to my reality. That afternoon, a guard retrieved me from my cell and walked me to a long, wide hallway that looked more like a receiving area for massive cargo than anything else. Several inmates were leaning against a concrete wall next to a wooden door, the first wood door I had seen in the facility. The hallway was cold, and I shivered with goosebumps waiting; some of the inmates were talking to each other, and signals of recognition were made, I was wondering what I was doing there, and I could tell one or two others were thinking the same. The wooden door opened, and we were ushered into a room with rows of pews facing a desk, and on top was a flat-screen television with a black screen. A guard turned the screen on, and we were looking at a desk littered with papers, folders, and books, after a few minutes a man in his sixties wearing a robe sat in the chair, shuffled a few papers, and then looked directly into the camera. The judge called us up one at a time to sit in a chair facing the flat-screen television and read off the charges against us. That was the first time I thought about what I might be charged with; attempted suicide was the only thing I could think of, and I couldn’t even be sure that was a sentenceable offense.

Subsequently, it was my turn, the other inmates were sitting in the pews behind me watching everything, which made me self-conscious. I sat frozen in the chair, my feet were cold, and I was nursing a stifled sweat, and then the judge started to speak. The charges he listed were unseemly, child abuse, for example, they were flagrantly grasping for straws. They might as well have charged me with everything, just in case. I asked him, “You’re sure you’ve got the right person?” He clarified. All of the basic assumptions I've made about freedom were challenged, the walk back to the cell block was a blur, and sitting in my cell that afternoon I tried to imagine a life here. However, I compared my life in jail to a life with my ex-wife, and well, jail might not be the worst option. My only two conditions were 1.) a private cell, and 2.) a new pair of glasses.

Eventually, almost all the charges were dropped. One charge was unfortunately true, technically. “Interference with communications,” was the charge. When I called the police, I called them using my ex-wife’s phone, and because I had the phone it meant she didn’t, so in the eyes of the law I was interfering with her ability to call the cops. It’s a little absurd considering I used that phone for no reason other than to call the police. I was not charged with attempted suicide. Had my ‘case’ gone to trial and had I been convicted of the charges filed I would have spent up to 30 years in prison. The charges were influenced by my ex-wife’s statement on the night of the incident. This statement she later admitted to fabricating. I learned later that she advocated for my release. Until then I was more comfortable in jail than I had been at home. But after that meeting, I requested a phone call.

For the next three days, I avoided the other inmates in my block, spending my time in my cell, alone. I ate my meals sitting with the same dark-haired man I sat with before. He was a solemn, remorseful man and I never learned why; we didn’t talk about what brought us there, instead, we talked like we were sitting in a café in a fantasy far from this cold, metal crate. I told him I was a writer, and he gave me a pencil and a few sheets of paper. When I wasn’t eating, I was in my cell alone, scribbling in small, fine print on paper like paper had been scarce for years and the fact that I had only a few sheets made me a wealthy man and an able target. When I wasn’t writing, I stood at the window inside my cell watching COPS, the Big Bang Theory, or the local news on the television hung high on the wall, almost directly across from my cell. When I got tired of standing and watching, I sat on the closest edge of the metal stool leaning to my life and stretching my body and neck to see the television through the window. One episode of the local news aired a story about a dentist practicing without a license and out of his car. He was licensed in Mexico and practiced in New Mexico. He was arrested and was the newest arrival after me in the block.

Additionally, there was an inmate in the block, this particular inmate and I never spoke, but I asked the inmate I was friendly with about him and he was no one to be trifled with; he would be on one of the next prison transports, in the meantime he was there in my block with me. The inmate that transferred cells after I was brought in moved into this other guy’s cell. He was shifty; he didn’t trust me, something about my presence. He wasn’t wrong I didn’t belong there, and because he and I both knew I didn’t belong there he was inventing his reasons for why I was there. He’s the main reason I left my cell only to eat. At the time I was worried about him. It occurred to me later, years later, that the fogginess I was walking around in kept me from fully acknowledging how dangerous my situation was. Had the charges not been dropped and I not been released when I had, had I spent another night or two in that cell block, I probably wouldn’t have made it out of there alive. I didn’t think or worry about him as much as I feel now like I should have, because I was more concerned, given my ripped-from-reality state of being, about my glasses; my glasses were severely bent, and one side of the frames had a screw loose. I thought about how I would get along if my glasses broke and everything had an indistinct nebulous look. I'm not sure I would have gotten along in there had my glasses broken. 

After being discharged, I was fitted for an ankle bracelet. They told me it was to keep me away from my ex-wife. I gladly wore it. I told them, “You think this is keeping me away from her, but realistically this is keeping her away from me.” Less than a week later they removed the ankle bracelet and less than a day after, my ex-wife reached out to me. She apologized and admitted that she needed to address her emotional issues and begged me to come back. Good manipulators make their mark feel trapped, the best manipulators not only convince their mark they’re trapped but cumulatively over time the manipulators take subtle steps using reasoned principles to make the trap seem despairingly real. My ex-wife is a very calculating person. Instead of acknowledging and working through her traumas, she taught herself to use them to help manipulate her lovers. She believed that to keep her lovers they needed to rely on her, so she cunningly created that reality for me emotionally and physically. It’s why the abused stay with their abuser.

The abused have been conditioned to believe they need their abuser. I moved back in with my ex-wife. During the following month, my ex-wife was very careful about her reactions, until I started to get comfortable again. And it got bad again, worse than before. That’s also where she slipped up. I realized that she was able to curb her reactions and her rage, I watched her do it for a month after we got back together. I thought a lot about the first several months of our relationship and the level of control she must have endeavored is astounding in hindsight. So, I started keeping a packed suitcase in the hall closet; she never thought to rummage through it because the suitcase lived there the entire time we lived in that house. It took me eight months, but one morning I grabbed that suitcase and walked out the front door and I never looked back. I don’t think about my time in the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility much but only because I have only intermittent memories of the experience. Five days is a long time in a situation like that. About those five days, I wish I had the regard to take the scribblings I penned on those valued sheets of paper (and the pencil) with me, an insight like that into my mind at a time when my mind was hiding from itself would be priceless.

Reflecting on my time in the Santa Fe County Adult Correctional Facility, I realize that because of those five days, a new lens was uncapped for me to see into the heart of my situation. The darkness I faced in that facility was an expression of the emotional darkness I had been living with for years. But in the depths of that darkness, I found some light in my ability to surmount anything. I learned that I had the strength to survive, to share my story, and to break free from the cycles of shame and manipulation. My journey is ongoing, I know I will continue to face challenges with courage and resilience. I hope my story inspires others to do the same, and that we can create a brighter, more compassionate world.