We shouldn’t have become friends. Everything about our separate lives suggested we wouldn’t meet—me in the comfort of my sunny Los Angeles home, framed by blue skies, and Frank confined by barbed wire and severed dreams, serving a life sentence at Crossroads Correctional Center (CRCC) in Cameron, Missouri.
As I log in to create a JPay account, a portal that helps prisoners stay connected with their friends and families, I hesitate.
First of all: Do I really want to talk to a convict?
Second: In Missouri, no less?
Third: What if there’s no such thing as a platonic pen pal and he’s creepy as hell?
But the truth is, I’m having a hard time reconnecting with my empathy. It’s been about a year and a half since March 2020, and along with everyone else, I’m drowning in a post-Covid world.
Like, really drowning.
It all started in 2018, long before the days of cotton swabs, face masks, and a sinister familiarity with the Greek alphabet, when my phone lit up days before I was about to begin my first semester at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in Los Angeles. The name lighting up my screen surprised me; I’d assumed I’d deleted his number long ago.
Something inside me stirred—a glimmer of excitement, a kind of spark I hadn’t been able to feel in about a year or so. The classic flutter in the stomach when you have a new crush, and you start spinning the “what-ifs,” planning your entire future with them before even typing a reply.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Jordan: Yoo—good seeing you last night. We should kick it when I’m out in LA visiting the boys later this summer.
We had run into each other for the first time in years at the bar Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, New York, when I was visiting the East Coast from LA in late June, about a year after I had moved there. We found ourselves in a corner chatting for the remainder of the night, ending the conversation with him telling me he’d be in LA in a few weeks to visit friends.
He followed up. I was too giddy to cringe at the “maybe we should kick it” or that he felt it necessary to make it known he would be “visiting the boys.”
Under his contact information, I still had his AIM screen name: an artifact of the days when I, mizsurfergirl47@aol.com, was a nervous twelve-year-old who spent weeknights mustering up the courage to send any boy—let alone this one—a casual “sup.”
Back then, Jordan was middle school royalty: the young jock with dark hair, lightly freckled, pale skin, and a chiseled prepubescent body. He left all the girls, and surely some of the boys, with hearts in our eyes. He was unattainable, and it gave me butterflies. Even at 25, I still felt the memory of that charm.
Tara: Hi! So great seeing you too. Let’s kick it hang out for sure.
The connection was immediate. Less than one vodka soda in, and it felt like we had been close friends all these years. Miraculously, he lived up to the hype of my schoolgirl crush, and I felt a rush of excitement at how easily we fit together. I loved the cheap talk of mutual friends and the comforting nostalgia of our shared New York City upbringing.
We sat on couches at The Roger Room, a dimly lit bar in Los Angeles, our words intertwined with the gentle brush of our lips, intoxicating us with affection and connection. He came home with me the first night, and then again the next night. We planned our next date immediately following the next time I would be in New York, which was a few weeks later.
I knew this was more than a fleeting dalliance.
I’m going to marry him.
I thought it the moment I saw him, and I held it in the back of my mind for months.
I had to check myself because this is how I react to every boy I’ve ever dated—falling so unbelievably hard and fast in mere moments. A blessing and a curse.
Mostly a curse, though. Difficult to think of a single blessing from that, actually.
Yet, this time truly felt different.
We had so much in common. Beyond our parallel pasts in the BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) era, our Von Dutch hats, and clunky digital cameras collecting dust in our childhood closets, we both wanted so much more than it seemed our peers did. Others in our high school graduating class surrendered to corporate life, becoming lawyers, bankers, or doctors. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—we were just dreamers.
Who didn’t want to sell our souls, we’d say. Dramatic? Sure. But it’s true.
We agreed that you could do anything you wanted in this life if you didn’t take yourself too seriously or listen to the noise of those who couldn’t understand what it meant to take risks and live freely. This shared optimism propelled us into a bicoastal long-distance relationship: me pursuing a career in the performing arts in Los Angeles and him spearheading new ideas for startups in New York.
Our relationship flourished despite the distance and continued to grow. We somehow managed to see each other once every three weeks, switching between NY and LA, or during carefree weekend getaways in Joshua Tree and Charleston. We were living in the moment, attending every concert playing near us, like Vampire Weekend and Portugal. The Man. We shared obscure food tours, summer bonfires, house parties, Sofar Sounds concerts, ’90s cover bands, Broadway shows, Shakespeare plays, underground cocktail clubs, and our private dance parties on his apartment’s roof in the rain—putting aside the actuality of the world around us.
I was auditioning constantly for films and TV shows like Stranger Things and Little Fires Everywhere, sometimes getting as far as screen tests, but more often than not, getting cut in the first round. The constant rejection was disheartening, but being back in school again and sharpening my tools every day was both rigorous and distracting.
In many ways, I was living in a fantasy world, investing myself daily in different characters, putting my life aside while learning to incorporate the Strasberg method, which focuses on drawing from personal experiences and emotions, using sensory memory and affective memory.
So, while I may have been a master at suppressing my yet-to-be-dealt-with-but-very-much-present trauma, I figured out how to dodge feeling my own pain by layering a character between myself and my reality. I was learning how to train myself to not live through it myself, but put that feeling into other people.
Which ultimately got extremely confusing and probably wasn’t the healthiest choice.
Life with Jordan was a joy, and I felt joyous—but I had yet to face the truth: I’d wanted him to be a distraction from my life, not a part of it.
Reality, as it does, crept up on us. As time went on, the more I disassociated from myself, the more I disassociated from Jordan.
No matter what he did, regardless of his intention, it began to irritate me.
These moments were no longer rare. Every interaction seemed to release a sliver of the tension bubbling in my chest as I fought to contain the wildfire inside me.
“My call got switched from 1pm to 3pm today,” he’d say.
“Great,” I’d say. “Now our entire day is ruined. We can’t do anything. Why even come to visit me in LA, then?”
Painful.
I was on the verge of coming undone.
We both had the wherewithal to realize something was deeply wrong, yet neither of us voiced what was bothering us, clinging desperately to a sense of levity.
My mom had died only a year before we started dating by traumatic asphyxia in an accident as she trapped herself between her car doors. My dad felt depressed, as he continued to flirt with substance abuse to no avail. A brain tumor killed my aunt, and lung cancer killed my cousin. Productions, auditions, and screen tests were shutting down, suspending my dream of finally landing any long-awaited role I had been working so hard to get. On top of it all, I’d say I was already a deeply lost millennial with no concrete direction. Everything felt like it was falling apart, and I was doing everything in my power to remain unfazed.
Where could I possibly begin?
As much of a tween fantasy as my relationship with Jordan was, that seemed to be all I was ready for. Though I’d felt it at times, it was impossible for me to let myself surrender to saying that I loved him. He told me he could never say those three words to me either because he never truly felt loved by me.
To make matters even worse, his world always seemed too myopic to ever carry my messy baggage. Whether that came from my own projection or the high-maintenance, insular world he projected on his own, it was likely a mix of both. I feared his lack of perspective when he sulked for days that his family couldn’t cheer him on at his triathlon because they had other obligations, or he gave his dad an attitude when he asked for help setting up their beach bonfire at 3:45pm when he’d specifically said 4pm. It always made me feel uneasy about being honest, because if he couldn’t handle life’s small ups and downs, how could he handle me?
Sometimes I joked that he reminded me of Ben Stiller’s character Tommy in Friends: “The One With the Screamer” when he got livid about something so minuscule, like a tourist accidentally walking up to a cab he hailed or a person cutting him in line in front of the restaurant host. “This isn’t how we do it in New York,” he would say.
But he was never actually that bad.
Most importantly, he couldn’t see that I didn’t even recognize myself, and it was only a matter of time before I crumbled entirely. It’s a mystery how he would’ve reacted to me as I unraveled because I never truly gave him a chance.
On April 1st of 2020, I laid the groundwork for him to initiate a breakup, and he finally took the bait.
“I’m so happy to be quarantined with my two best friends. There’s no place I’d rather be,” I’d say.
“Nowhere?” he’d ask.
“Absolutely nowhere,” I’d reply.
I shut down, depleted of all energy. I couldn’t even muster the strength to see what I was doing or how I was doing it. I couldn’t pretend anymore that life was some sublime adventure, as much as I wanted to drown myself in that lie. Nor could I communicate what was happening to me, so I tried shoving down the reality of my pain, away from me, away from him. It happened over FaceTime—quick, but painful. I had too much to explain and didn’t know where to begin, so I just never began.
The muscles in my face had grown so numb from my forced smile that I let them rest in their stoic expression for months on end until it seemed frozen that way.
I was apathetic. About everything.
So, from that moment on, I promised myself that until I could truly come to terms with everything that had happened, I wouldn’t bring anyone else into it.
And that’s how we got here, I think as I contemplate JPay Services’ login screen, slowly typing small identifiers into my profile.
I’m now 28. It’s been three and a half years since my mom died and over a year and a half since my breakup, and I haven’t even remotely tried to face it.
Any of it.
I’ve reached a point where even the wrongdoings and catastrophes of the world, in my mind, seem to affect me more than anyone else. I say I’m worried about the state of this planet—global warming, never-ending social injustice, Trump’s presidency, the Covid death toll, evacuations and displacement, job loss, shortages, domestic violence victims trapped in quarantine with their abusers, and so forth—and I truly am.
And yet…
The world is on fire, sure, but my world is engulfed in flames.
Apparently, the universe chucks you what it thinks you can handle, so I can only assume it thinks I’m made of steel.
But I don’t believe the universe gives a shit about anyone individually.
Sorry.
People who think that “the universe has a crazy way of working things out” must be incredibly fortunate because they haven’t experienced anything drastic enough to question whether the universe and the spirituality that surrounds it want to single them out. It’s a blessing, really—perhaps even self-absorbed and undeniably naïve—but living in a world that small must feel deeply blissful, and for that, I guess I am jealous.
Don’t worry, I can’t stand myself either.
I can’t tolerate anything.
Or anyone.
And I’m certainly not the greatest joy to be around.
I can’t recall the exact day I made this switch from fun-loving to absolutely unbearable, living at a baseline of negativity. I used to like who I was—proud of her special, fearless, silly, even carefree spirit. But whoever I am now, I wouldn’t like me if I met myself.
In fact, I’d talk a lot of shit about her.
But right now, although people love to tell me there’s not, there is certainly a hierarchy of pain. There just has to be. And, deep in my bones, I just know my pain has got to be pretty high up there in the rankings.
Woe is most certainly me.
Even in my wallowing crater of self-pity, it’s obvious I need some perspective.
Somewhere deep inside, I feel a remnant of self-awareness telling me I need to see outside of myself, and that if I don’t, the outcome will be entirely calamitous.
It’s not like I’m craving a miserable life. I only have one, after all.
So, when my friend tells me she’s working with a program that connects incarcerated inmates to the outside world, I ask her if there’s any way she could connect me so I could get a pen pal too. If I can connect someone in prison to the outside world and bring a bit of color to their dreary existence—that will likely make my world a bit brighter too.
Truly selfless altruism is rare—perhaps even impossible.
Or, at least, for me.
Although, at this moment, I feel so overly-self-therapized despite not yet having attended a truly effective therapy session.
When I’m matched with Frank as a pen pal, I do some digging. The term “prisoner” always carries a negative connotation, and it’s not lost on me that there’s something strange about a twenty-eight-year-old woman corresponding with a forty-year-old man behind bars. But after reading Frank’s case, regardless of my inner turmoil, my blood begins to boil. I can’t quite grasp his punishment.
In fact, I can’t believe it.
And somehow that’s the first warmth I feel inside my spirit in a long time.
So here’s Frank’s story: He’s serving a life sentence for a nonviolent, drunken, deeply regretful crime. Facing difficult personal challenges at the time, Frank robbed a general store in Gallatin, Missouri, with a broken pellet gun, grabbed $100 from the register, and dropped it on the way out while profusely apologizing.
A robbery is surely a crime worthy of some form of punishment. It likely caused a traumatic experience for the clerk, which shouldn’t be excused.
But a life sentence?
That feels criminal in itself.
I may not be an expert, but I do my research and recognize that his punishment simply doesn’t fit the crime. While I can’t exactly relate to the magnitude of his mistake, I’m still mindful that it was, in fact, a terrible mistake he made twenty years ago. If everyone was judged by the (unharmful) mistakes they made years ago or the person they were, with no room or chance to grow, then what’s the point of encouraging growth and forgiveness in the first place? Isn’t the philosophy of justice—something the law and judges are meant to uphold—supposed to recognize that people can learn from their mistakes and reintegrate into society? By failing to address the root causes of criminal behavior, doesn’t this approach just risk perpetuating stigma instead?
Deeply confused by it.
It’s difficult to imagine how it would feel for someone to decide you’re a criminal, unworthy of any mercy, for the rest of your life. Then, you’re discarded into a system without anyone willing to hear your side of the story or look at you as anything else.
It would probably take a genuine superpower to stay positive or to hold onto the person you once were.
So, in the winter of 2021, Frank and I introduce ourselves in broad strokes.
December 15, 2021
To: JPay Services – Frank
Hi Frank!!
My name is Tara, and I heard you were interested in gaining a new friend… I love meeting new people. I’m 28, raised in New York, and currently live in Los Angeles. I love writing personal essays and hope to write a book one day… I love watching movies, live theater, listening to music, and reading… Some of my favorite books are The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, White Oleander by Janet Fitch, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I work with the organization CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), which advocates for foster youth, and that’s become a really wonderful and special part of my life. I’d love to hear about you, how you’re doing, your interests and what makes you happy! Again, it’s so nice to meet you, and I’m looking forward to gaining a new friend.
Talk soon!
Tara
December 17, 2021
To: Tara
Tara, Hello! I am glad to make your acquaintance. You heard right; I was and will always be looking for a kindred spirit—or someone I can call a friend. I’ve always been a people person, and I look forward to getting to know you too… I love the outdoors. I hope to one day hike the Pacific Crest Trail. I like musicals, my favorite of all time is Les Mis—I also want to see Wicked. I want to become a world traveler; the first vacation I want to take is a foodie vacation. My mom, who is my best friend, also worked with troubled youth. She was a CASA too, and as you, she loved it. I love all music, anything from classical piano to ’70s rock to Mama Sol. I’ve never been to the opera, but I want to go. I’m a movie junkie; Robin Williams did so many great movies. Let’s just say… I like to read. Formal writing has helped me to order my thoughts. Anything that helps expand the soul. What makes me happy? What a great question. Me—I make me happy, or better said … Life, life makes me happy.
Take care and warm regards,
Frank
As a native New Yorker, I’m naturally a skeptic at heart. It’s difficult for me to reconcile his kindness and optimism with the image I had of someone so disheartened and lost in this life that I could offer encouragement. Here I am, ready to save him with my good graces, but I’m not sure I’ll emerge as a hero like I intended.
Then again, I’m having a pretty impossible time, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from my seemingly fake email. Maybe that’s his approach too.
Frank tells me he’s earning his bachelor’s degree in communications; I tell him I majored in communications too. When I recommend he read one of my favorite books, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, to learn more about her experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, he tells me he just checked it out of their library. He also wants to write a memoir one day and perhaps a sci-fi novel. I tell him Les Miserables is my all-time favorite musical too. I follow his lead on being hopeful when talking about the future, despite his life sentence, and say he’ll have to go to a show on Broadway in the near future.
Frank sends me his favorite lasagna recipe; I feel too guilty to tell him I am a pescatarian, so I just say thank you for sending! He tells me his plan for taking the train down the East Coast. He can’t wait to check out the beaches in South Carolina and reintroduce his taste buds to every cuisine imaginable. We exchange endless book recommendations, including all things Maggie Nelson, Mitch Albom, Joan Didion, Percival Everett, Ocean Vuong, Ann Patchett, and Haruki Murakami.
January 20, 2022
To: Tara
Wild… was absolutely inspiring. Cheryl Strayed is so unapologetically herself; I loved that. No pretense, just here I am and this is what I’ve been through, how it made me feel and how I overcame it—so tasteful. What an amazing correlation between life’s ups and downs and their relationship to hiking the mountains. My favorite moment: “I didn’t just feel like a backpacking expert. I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen.”....Have you read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl? I love this book; anyone who has been in prison (mental or physical) could benefit from it. It definitely should be a required reading for all of humanity.
So I read it.
Frankl’s profound and harrowing account of his unimaginable suffering in Auschwitz, where he discovered his philosophy of logotherapy. This idea—which claims that finding purpose and meaning is both a choice and essential for survival—captivated him particularly. I immediately echo its transformative power.
January 20, 2022 Cont.
To: Tara
“As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before.” It’s good to be reminded just how human we all are, and how much we have in common.
Frankl describes a man struggling to cope with his wife’s death, feeling as though life had lost its meaning without her. Together, they reframe his grief by asking him to consider the alternative: What if his wife had outlived him? She would’ve suffered the same pain, and by dying first, she was spared that suffering. His grief was a form of love, he says, and with that, the man was able to find a sense of purpose in his suffering.
I think about my own purpose since my mom died.
I consider reframing my own grief—but the task is overwhelming.
Some days are bad, some aren’t as bad, and some I’m just better at pretending they’re not. My feelings turn on a dime, moving too quickly before I can grab hold. I’m stuck in a dichotomy of feeling devastated, with a clandestine sense of relief.
My mom was unpredictable, steady like a fault line until it randomly shook you to your core. As I grew older, her moods began to darken, growing more harsh and unruly. I’m not a doctor, but I do love diagnosing people, perhaps to justify my own behavior—and given her refusal to seek any form of professional help—it seemed like she might have one hundred percent exhibited undiagnosed bipolar traits.
One morning, I’d see her talk-singing down the hallway as she twirled her long blonde hair, pulling me in for a warm hug and starting my day with her infectious light. Her love was genuine and her care was complete. For the majority of the time, especially when I was younger, this version of her was what I lived for.
Those cheerful mornings became grim. She was dealing with some unspoken grief, rarely letting me in but dragging me down with her. She seemed to be constantly surrounded by a quiet gloom, turning cruel as she’d say how much she hated our family or in fact thought she didn’t have one.
So, for now, I’d rather not parse it out. At this moment in time, I’m not even ready to say it out loud to anyone or even face the truth myself: Will my life be easier now that she’s gone?
I can’t tell if I’m a terrible person, because isn’t everyone who passes supposed to be remembered as a saint? I’m struggling to fit my feelings into a narrative of universal forgiveness, which feels even more confusing because I’d argue with myself that my mom was a saint half of the time, and I wouldn’t change being raised by her magic for anything.
I feel this gut-wrenching sensation every time I have that thought, like a rush of debilitating guilt that makes everything feel weightless and hollow. How can you learn to grieve when part of your grief is relief?
So, I got nothing. For now.
Every time I consider telling Frank about my mom, I find myself thrown back into a memory from the summer before I ever opened a JPay account.
After our breakup, Jordan and I met up for a drink in July 2021. I owed him some sort of apology, or closure at least, but I still couldn’t exactly pinpoint what I was sorry for.
I was seemingly better, fine. We all were—I suppose.
Covid restrictions were being lifted, vaccines were accessible, and our lives began to slowly but surely fall back into place.
“That wasn’t you,” Jordan said. “You became someone else. I can separate who you were from when we started dating to who you were when we broke up.”
But that was me. Is me. The whole me. I guess.
I was still the same person, with all parts of me coming together as part of my story as I struggled to discover a purpose I couldn’t ignore, no matter how much I wished I could. I suppose it’s easier for him to think otherwise. I still find it impossible to articulate what I’m feeling, so I just nod and agree.
In some sort of defiance to Jordan’s assertion that I could somehow separate the destructiveness of my grief from the rest of my life, eventually, I mention only the general outlines of my own grief to Frank.
Funny how I’m annoyed when other people reject my grief, and I can ignore it for years and be fine with it.
Even in my present state of self-absorption, I’m not too far gone to realize I’m speaking with someone whose freedom has been taken from him, so I try to explain gently, minimally.
Doesn’t bode well for my “no hierarchy of pain” argument. Looks like I’m starting to learn something…
January 30, 2022
To: Frank
Writing is so wonderful, but I agree it can be painful. If you ask me, writing is truly the best form of therapy… Also, it’s nice knowing you have the option to share your writing with other people or just keep it for yourself... I write every day, have for a while now, and am only beginning to have the courage to share it. My mom passed away suddenly in a car accident a few years ago. I found a lot of comfort in writing and hearing other people’s stories and experiences in memoirs, personal essays, and articles.
February 4, 2022
To: Tara
I’m sorry to hear about your mom… I am willing to lend you mine; she still has the heart of a court-appointed volunteer, plus she adopted my friends, so you’d be in good company… My writing skills are improving; the day is fast approaching that I will feel confident enough to put pen to paper for a book. My story (aka—divide comedy/tragedy), while dark and certainly comical, is not so much about a career in crime as much as it is about a person dealing or not dealing with early childhood trauma and grief—I could’ve used your insight in my 20s, probably wouldn’t have been ready for it though. The fact that you went through such a soul-wrenching loss, without getting lost, speaks to your mom’s influence and how much she lived on in you.
Except I still feel lost right now.
So lost—I still can’t be honest with myself. It’s not showing through my writing, and honestly, the fake narrative that I’ve got it all figured out feels nice to hear, but it also feels wrong. Although I can write anything I want, it doesn’t make it true. It’s not about lying; it’s more about withholding so much of what I should probably say. I’m not letting him get to know me, and in turn, I’m starting to understand the character I’m rewriting for myself better than who I am.
Anyone will believe what you tell them. I’ll believe anything I tell them.
We don’t speak on the phone and can’t meet in person. We probably never will, although I’m hopeful for his release one day. It would be fine to call, and I certainly feel safe to do so because we’re aligned on our friendship, but an email is slower, thought out, and contemplative. I’m not sure how I’ll perform, chatting candidly in real time. I don’t want anything to come out wrong, and I fear I would disappoint myself. And I’d like him to keep looking to me as a guiding light.
After all, I’m not here to talk about myself but to lend a helping hand. I’m guarded, and these words have become my force field. I want to match his positivity, regardless of whether I actually feel it.
But over time, as I question my own writing, I ask, what’s the point of any of it—writing to him, writing my own work, healing—if I’m not honest? The reason I admire and look up to so many artists is because they’re willing to tell the truth. They’re willing to be vulnerable and fearless, and in turn, their vulnerability helps so many, helps me.
Maybe I’m turning into one of those phonies Holden Caulfield always hated the most.
It may be impossible to heal without being honest. If I’m not, it will just prolong everything. It’s already been years.
What the hell.
So I open up, little by little. And conversation by conversation, we become real to each other.
March 14, 2022
To: Tara
It’s as if we’re sitting in a coffee shop talking “about things that matter” and “what it’s worth.” I’ll simply ask this question… what is the worth of a human being? The systemic problems in our bureaucracy stem from a disconnect between people at opposite ends of the social spectrum. In communication, there’s a concept called the “conceptualized other,” which refers to how we often perceive others as abstract rather than fully human—this creates a barrier to understanding. If we can’t see each other as human, then your problems don’t feel like my problems, and vice versa. But in reality, there’s no issue that affects only one part of society without impacting the rest. At the same time, getting too emotionally involved can hinder those trying to help—finding a balance is key.
My skepticism is dwindling. I’m beginning to trust this is who he truly is. Frank shares with me an essay he wrote on the tragic mishandling of prisoners during the Covid-19 outbreak, which led to his cellmate Charles dying from a lack of care. He mentions that his community is suffering. The drug problem is at an all-time high, with overdoses occurring regularly. Many leave prison having experienced violence, witnessed death, and then face drug problems and increased agitation when they’re released, which frequently leads to recidivism.
The current incarceration model fails to maintain prisoners’ ties to society, and these severed connections lead to a distortion of humanity—similar to how a damaged appendage becomes unusable over time if it’s not consciously rehabilitated.
May 9, 2022
To: Tara
My big dream is to start a movement (nonprofit) called S.T.O.R.M. S.T.O.R.M. is an acronym for Service Towards Others Redeems Mankind, and its mission statement is “living a life dedicated to helping people help people.” I can’t think of anything better to do for the rest of my life than to help people while at the same time trying to make a difference.
In the next months and years, we continue to fill in the details of our lives, adding color and shadows. Frank tells me his daughter, with whom he’d lost contact, reached out to him again and how meditation has made a profound impact on his life. I tell him how moved I was by the artist JR’s documentary Paper & Glue. JR is a French artist who visited a maximum-security prison in Tehachapi, California, where the majority of inmates have been imprisoned for nearly a decade, many with life sentences without the possibility of parole. In the prison yard, he created large-scale pastings and facilitated recordings made by inmates, giving them a chance to tell their stories and be more than just a forgotten number in the system.
I attend the screening at the Museum of Tolerance, the Holocaust museum in Los Angeles, where I hear from one of the prisoners named Kevin. He’s just been released after spending fourteen years in prison. As he speaks to the audience so eloquently, his mother is present, along with guards from the prison. The swastika tattoo on his face is covered, and he’s scheduled to have it removed the next day. Kevin shares that during the project, many inmates were moved to a lower security level where they could finally try for parole and have their gang tattoos covered. I tell Frank how the dynamic of seeing the guards converse with Kevin so casually at the reception, holding their glasses of wine as if they’re friends at a party, caught me so off guard it brought endless tears to my eyes. He responds by emphasizing that showing empathy and giving prisoners a chance to feel human can truly change and save lives. Above all, he says, it’s the reason art is so important.
He’s right. I can’t think of anything more meaningful.
Our shared passion for being creative not only helps us survive but also deepens our genuine connection to each other. Although our worlds are so separate, we really do have so much in common.
Over the next two years, the world around me changes, and as I’m becoming more honest with myself, I realize how grief will change with me too. Maybe it’s not something I will grow out of completely, and maybe that’s just the way it goes. Learning to accept my life has involved a blend of insights from absorbing stories, memoirs, characters, conversations, perspective shifts, and art combined with taking real, tangible action. But it often feels never-ending, as if evolving is only a process of getting closer to healing, not healing itself.
March 1, 2024
To: Frank
How do you remain so positive? Honestly. How do you do it? The world is so unfair, specifically the justice system, and it makes me sad and angry that one small mistake has determined the rest of your life... It’s unfathomable to me. It’s not an easy feat.
March 15, 2024
To: Tara
I had a perspective shift. For 5 and a half years I didn’t think I deserved to see the light of day or listen to music or feel any type of joy. So I covered the blinds in my cell. Looking back, I was going through the stages of grief; my identity as a father, husband, and member in society was slowly dying. I’d compare it to mourning the loss of a loved one, except the life lost was my own. I was fighting for my life in the courts, which in November of 2011 would come to an end (I’d later find a way back in). Those five and a half years were torture, and the waves of pain were so close together it was hard to see over them. But something strange happened when my appeal in the federal courts was denied; a resignation set in. I decided I would honor the sacrifice my loved ones were paying for my choices… by becoming the best person I could be. It was time to let go of the outside world. I’ve done my best to honor their sacrifice… so I took the covers off the blinds and began to listen to music again… Did you know most superheroes come into their powers through a painful experience? …When life becomes more about everyone else and not just you, you are truly freed from the mental prison.
I read this twice over before I realize my cheeks are drenched in tears. This is a choice. He has made a choice that many people—at least in my experience—never have to make. Often, we either feel sorry for ourselves and seek validation for struggling, or we suppress all of those feelings.
Yes, I know I’m guilty of both.
Frank’s the only person I’ve ever talked to who’s had to surrender to this kind of choice in a way that makes me believe him—every single word.
March 15, 2024 (cont’d).
To: Tara
I enjoy connecting with people too; we’re kindred spirits in that respect. I feel it’s definitely a part of my purpose. Grief that comes from death is definitely one of those places we can all meet. The content of the experience may be different, and we may all grieve in our own way, but there is a shared experience that, regardless of our differences, realizes our deep connection to one another. I think we become aware of the fact that life is not promised to anyone. For me, helping others in or through their grief is the way we are transformed by it. I also feel helping one another through the process is a way to keep the voice of those who have passed on alive in our hearts. If we stuff our feelings into their memory, then we silence their voice. Because you haven’t silenced your mom’s voice, she is still guiding your voice, which is helping me not silence mine… Like me, you’ve found your superpower on the other side of grief. I do believe no matter what we do in life, where we are, or who we are with… happiness is a choice.
I believe that, through this choice, Frank has become the greatest version of himself.
April 12, 2024
To: Frank
I have to say I was incredibly moved by your explanation of raising the blinds/your perspective shift… I’m sure it was devastating and disheartening to watch the world around you change, but what is so amazing is that you changed with it. I agree; we’re all so entitled to the things we think we deserve, when in reality, we haven’t earned them in the first place. You faced your grief head-on, and you’re coming out on the other side, no matter what struggles you continue to face mentally or physically. To me, that feels like a genuine superpower. I really think you have a lot to say too. I think you should just start to go for the memoir. I will too. Since we talk about Man’s Search for Meaning and finding a purpose, I think through our emails, I’ve found mine, and that’s also writing truthfully.
I begin to look back at my emails with Frank from the very first day, and with each correspondence, I see my guard lifting as my words become gradually more honest. Not even just with him, but with myself. With my own writing and what I’m willing to share.
May 23, 2024 (cont’d)
To: Frank
I know I say this a lot but your perspective and ability to have such a genuine and optimistic outlook is truly so inspiring. I know it’s impossible to feel it 24/7, but for what it’s worth, it feels like you do. I think people need perspective to survive. I most certainly do. It’s one of the main reasons I began doing CASA, and another reason I decided to reach out to you in the first place. I was so lost in my grieving process, and it was tough to remind myself that the world didn’t just revolve around me and my own pain. I think a lot of people can relate to that—how consuming our own individual lives can become and how we think/believe that no one’s adversity matches our own. I struggled deeply with listening to people complain about their lives and what I believed to be minuscule problems. I never wanted to hear it. I think you do a great job listening and empathizing with whatever anyone is feeling. It’s probably the most important quality to have in a friend. It made me realize that I wanted to be more like you. I feel so different than I did a few years ago in terms of my grief, maybe due to time and personal growth, but I also think a lot has to do with our friendship. What a special journey it’s been.
I mean it. I owe a lot to our friendship.
I’m not fully there yet, and perhaps I never will be, but I try to find forgiveness more than ever when I reflect on grief. In Frank’s words, there are many ways to see people; you just have to be open to it.
Through writing, and writing honestly, we both find our truths. It’s difficult to learn to be resilient on my own. But by continuing to learn from the resilience and vulnerabilities of people in stories—whether in memoirs, movies, or music—we continue to unlock so many new sources of inspiration.
It’s a lifeline.
Frank’s favorite quote from Man’s Search for Meaning is this: “The salvation of man is through love and in love.” Love, in all its different forms and variations, helps people find meaning in life, especially when it manifests itself in the service of others. Frank continues to feel the warmth of the sunlight on his face, and every time I lift my blinds, I’m inspired to do the same.
If I could do it all over again—my behavior, my blindness, self-involvement, and inability to be in a relationship at the time—I’m not sure I would have done anything differently. Though my mind wanders back to the ifs: if Jordan was the right person at the wrong time, if he even really knew me, or if I truly ever knew him.
We were young, and maybe that’s all there is.
Frank’s appeal was denied once more, and while there’s still a little bit more fight left in him, the sliver of hope fades with every day that passes in the harsh and unforgiving Missouri courts.
Frank deserves a second chance. He really, really does. The world could benefit from his perspective.
As for me, who knows?
I’m certainly not the greatest version of myself yet, and maybe never will be. But since I sent that first email in 2021, I’ve found my love of writing, and through writing, I’m choosing to pursue purpose and meaning and hope. It feels like I’ve been reintroduced to who I’ve always been. And somehow, I see her—see me—in a light I’m learning to respect again.
