Age is just a number?

Today I had an interesting conversation with a young man who is at the start of his journey (of 10 years).

Things didn’t get off to a particular good start because he broke two of the many unwritten convict rules. He asked what I was in for and how long I’ve been down. Major no-nos before a proper introduction.

I chalked it up to his being young and not knowing any better. Hopefully he learns from his mistakes.

Anyways, we got talking, and I did get round to telling him that I’m coming up to my 21st year. I do look younger than my age, but with him I could see the wheels turning in his head, trying to process what he just heard.

His response was, “so that means you’ve been locked up more than half your life?”

I did realise that I was at that point, but it’s a lot different when you hear someone else say it. It’s like “DAMN. I’ve really spent more than half of my life in prison.” It makes me wonder if it’s downhill from this point.

It did make me reflect on the past 20+ years. It’s hard to come up with exact moments from the last 20 that I can reminisce on. I’m not saying that nothing good has happened the last 20+ years, but when I think of the good times, I think about my time before prison. They do say that life comes to a stop once you get locked up, and there’s days when I feel like that 20 year old young man.

I think deep down, I’ll always be that young man at heart.

Now I’m hoping that the young man I met today got something from the conversation, because even though 10 years won’t equal to half of his life in prison, it’s 10 years that he might want to forget, or 10 years that he’ll use to better himself.

I don’t believe that my 20+ years are wasted years, but I’m my own biggest critic, and will forever think that I’m falling short on my own life journey.