WHAT I REALLY NEED

I need love.

It is a basic human function that is often neglected or even ignored in the free world. It is further compounded by a prison term.

In my setting, my living conditions……there is no love. You can be suffocated by respect, but its often ego or fear driven. Love left the building after visit hours, if you were fortunate enough to recieve them.

How can I reach out? How can I ask for basic human needs? Society is often to buisy to stop and appriciate the ebb and flow of the human contact that is love, friendship, affection, dedication and sacrifice.

I have my mother, my rock, who bears the burden of showing me the love I need as a human being. After almost 10 years of prison and what looks to be conservatively 10 more to go……..she is tired.

She is my everything, all the time. I will never know love like hers.

But I feel like the dead weight. My freakishly long sentence for stolen property is unfair and stressfull. I dont know what to do. I dont know how to help her. I am helpless by sentence, not by design.

I see so many hollow, meaningless relationship formed in here to the outside world. All of them are based on the basic human desire of contact and love. This place and its residents are often broken, damaged, warped even ruined maby.

I dont know how to grow and mature socially. There is very little outlet to the outside. There are even less opportunities in here to excersise a meaningfull relationships.

I feel the clutches of Institutionalization in the horizon. I suspect I may suffer them already. Like the frog who dosent jump from the pan as it slowly boils to death, how can you spot the subtle changes over the course of mind numbing sentences?

Its not a matter of if, it is simply a matter of when. The numbers dont lie. People serving sentnces of a decade or more are considered disabled and suffering phycological illnesses caused by confinement and high stress over long periods. A lack of love.

Disabled.

I believe in love.

And I believe love can help any situation.
I think people can be saved by love.
How do I find the love from here? Who has time? Who cares?

I know Im still human, I desire love yet.

Todd Bass
DOC #861671