The Day Rachel Jumped off the 3rd Tier of my Cell Block

Running will always be my escape whether in prison or the outside world. My return to prison has forced me to reassess what is important to me and what I am willing to do to create the life I want to live. This is a place where beauty is hard won, where every brilliant day must be savored. Running grants me the respite from this dismal environment that I so require. The striking of my feet on the treadmill can transport me to the beaches of Fuji or the bustling streets of Boulder. I allow my mantra to wash over me. I am somebody. I am somebody. I am somebody.

All my life I have blamed the outside world for all my frustrations and problems, to deny ownership of my role in my present situation. I immerse myself in self-righteous outrage in the certainty that I am completely right and have been terribly wronged by others. I carry around the beliefs that the majority of my problems were circumstantial and situational-which is to say-external. My constant internal dialogue forces me to realize that I am the cause of my difficulties and! need to gain the capacity of self reflection. The real and imagined betrayals I had encountered throughout my life have become a blueprint for the life I thought I was supposed to live. I have lived my life fleeing a brokenness, one passed down to me by the broken people who came before me. The power of denial is potent and destructive. I yearn for the open road to allow my legs to stretch and run and to push my body forward. I am somebody. I am somebody. I am somebody.

My focus on the loneliness, the obliterated hope, the self-doubt and the mind numbing sorrow does not benefit me. I know that I need to refocus my energy on a positive endeavor, one that involves all the women at DWCF. I am on a journey, while incarcerated, to open my mind and heart to work towards my own redemption. I now linger on the small moments of grace, forgiveness, encouragement and kindness. I try to use every opportunity to inspire others in ways I could never imagine before. All of these selfless acts allow me to recover a life worth celebrating, a life that rediscovers the love and freedom we all desire. Now when I encounter women in prison, I no longer see sadness, pain and regret rather I see light, joy and love. I try not to allow short-term frustrations to disrupt my long-term goals. I am committed to make the most of this time and to concentrate on my desire to transform not only my life but the lives of other women. I found that there are unlimited ways to help all of us that are confined to this prison.

Running has taught me how to both escape my environment and to work through my issues. I continue to try to lean into a world that is full of tenderness, laughter and compassion. My running community has now been traded for the community of women in prison and they have shown me how to find peace and meaning wherever I am. I no longer run from my fears, my doubts, my past. I now face them head on which changes how I feel about myself, my life and my incarceration. I am somebody. I am somebody. I am somebody.

It was a quintessential prison setting. Everything was concrete, gray and frigid. The metal doors were a dull army green and clanged shut every other minute adding to the chaotic environment. The noise in the unit was almost unbearable with tv battling illegal radios blasting different stations and 41 women talking, laughing, yelling and singing. In the background, one could hear the garble of the officers calling offenders to the block office over the faulty PA system. Everything in this unit was slightly toxic and unrecognizable to most human beings.

In my cell I was trying to read when I heard the voices in the unit erupt into a hurricane of sound. The tenor of the unit flipped hastily. People were yelling “Stop” and “Why are you going up to the third tier?” and then the horrific unrecognizable splat of a human skull hitting the concrete floor. The tone of the women yelling morphed into screams and guttural animalistic wails. The officers bellowed “Lock the fuck down now!” The chaos increased as the women ran to the jumper to see if she was still alive and if they could put her brain matter back inside her skull. The woman was dead but the officers were required to do CPR on her. All three of the officers who witnessed the suicide would quit in the next three months due to PTSD. For the women of Unit 3, CDOC would offer them a one-time only group mental health session to help deal with the trauma of watching someone swan-dive to their death. The disparities were on full display as management tried to minimize the severity of the situation. Their flagrant disregard for our well-being was apparent in their lack of action. At this point no one could comprehend what had just happened. It defied all logic. But the most troubling part of this story is that the woman who killed herself had been pleading for help for the last seven days. Literally begging the staff for a mental health provider to come and talk to her. No one took the time to talk to her, no one thought she was worth the effort so she took matters into her own hands and killed herself. Her world was unraveling and no one cared. Ending her suffering in a place that did not value her, that deemed her unworthy of help was common in this setting.

During this time, the facility had only four mental health providers which meant that each mental health provider was responsible for two hundred clients. I declined their gracious offer of a mental health appointment because I realized that that would have opened up a can of worms that they were ill equipped to deal with. If I would have shared with them all the problems that were occurring around me they would have offered up a few pages of word searches or maybe a crossword puzzle to soothe my angst and promise me they would be able to see me again in a year. It is disorienting trying to navigate our own mental health in a system that does not care. Her suicide had annihilated our hope which was tenuous at best.

Inside the razor-wire fence she was a number, a throwaway, unseen. But outside the fence, she was a mother, a daughter, a sister, a friend. Someone that was missed. Her name was Rachel.