Bridging the Gap
Chanell Burnette on empathy, prejudice, and friendship in prison.
Many have the experience of constantly being surrounded by people, yet feeling so alone. This has definitely been my experience here in prison.
Initially, before I settled down and gotten to know the real me, I was lonely and ached for companionship, the love and happiness that a man could provide, when all along those were things I had to discover within.
Here, at the end of my incarceration journey, I find loneliness once more. I am alone because those who are not so close to going home are not focused on the things I’m focused on. We now have little in common as I prepare to rejoin the world. And sadly, some are envious; jealous because my debt to society will soon be paid in full. It is important and helpful to be surrounded by like-minded individuals. However, in an institution where chaos is the natural order, that proves difficult. Being surrounded by others with similar goals helps propel me forward on my way to my dreams.
From a completely different background than myself, Mrs. X and I became fast friends. And after one year of our friendship, she confided in me deeply about how in the midst of her struggle with bipolar disorder, she took the life of her son.
My mother always told me to never say never. I still did, until I became incarcerated and had to learn to be more open-minded, receptive, and empathetic, because we never really know what someone else has gone through. We may never understand what mental agony grips them.
Here in prison, I ended up befriending a woman who has been there for me in several ways. From a completely different background than myself, Mrs. X and I became fast friends. And after one year of our friendship, she confided in me deeply about how in the midst of her struggle with bipolar disorder, she took the life of her son.
Not long after my arrival to Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, I attended a Kairos Retreat—Walk #14, as I recall. Within this light and cheerful atmosphere, amidst tables full of cookies and styrofoam cups full of steaming coffee, women stood and shared their stories. One of them was the woman I thought I could not be a friend to because I’d prejudged her, my friend, Mrs. X.
Mrs. X stood bravely before us and told the heart-wrenching story of her battle with mental illness, tragically causing her to take her son’s life. We all rose tearfully and hugged this troubled woman. Hearing her story and witnessing firsthand the pain on her face from missing her child, her suffering was palpable. From one mother to another, I felt her pain.
When I became incarcerated, my boys were only 6 months and 3 years old. Being separated while they were so young was devastating and traumatic for us all. I have had to watch them grow from afar, missing important milestones and having to stand by helplessly when they’ve needed me. That was difficult. And being apart, separated from all I live for, has been the most arduous part of my journey.
My great friend Mrs. X would always encourage me to press on through my job and my studies when I wanted to give up and simply stay in bed. But the most important lesson I learned from her came through observation: I could make it! If she could go on while missing a deceased son, I could certainly make it for my living ones. I had to.
Along this journey, I have met many wonderful people, some of whom have committed, on paper, truly heinous crimes. But who am I to judge? To say I would never befriend a person because of something they’d done? Look at what I’ve done!
When we were housed together in the same unit, our friendship continued to grow stronger over time. This beautiful grey-haired, well put-together, classy lady, whom I had originally clocked as some sort of monster, was the one to provide solace when I cried, missing my children. Although my children were alive and one of hers was not, she still sat in the dayroom with me selflessly and let me cry. She continuously rolled off toilet tissue from her roll of cheap 2-ply and handed it to me for my tears. She stayed with me until I felt better.
Sometimes we’d sit at the table with pictures of our children propped up in the middle. That was our little thing. A photo of her daughter, beautifully adorned in her wedding gown, just married to the man of her dreams. A photo of my handsome sons, side by side, growing rapidly into young men. Albeit our children were growing up well without us, we still missed them dearly.
Thankfully, my boys have visited often, usually every other month. I am grateful to my family for facilitating that, because in that way I was able to watch them grow up. Visitation was great, but upon returning to my wing, I felt a bit of guilt knowing that Mrs. X’s son would never come to visit. She felt joy for me, I was sad for her.
Although we no longer live together, we are still friends today. When my friends at home forgot I existed because I was out of sight and out of their minds, it was those I least expected to be there who held me whenever I cried about anything. They wiped away the tears that fell as my friends at home fell away, slowly but surely.
We eat together. Pray together. Laugh together and cry together. We form friendships that are long-lasting with people we couldn’t have imagined knowing on the outside who have become closer than family. We are all one another has at times.
Humility is a characteristic that some possess and some do not. However, life’s experiences will teach us. Becoming imprisoned taught me to lower myself and be more humble. I am not unlike the ladies I worked beside in our housing unit, doing housekeeping work. We made a meager twenty-seven cents an hour to clean feces and blood from toilets left behind by grown women. There is nothing more humiliating than that! But, in order to rise above your circumstances, you must lower yourself.
I am not above any of the women that I share this prison experience with. We are all the same. We are diversified, yet we are parallel. And so we must get along, not only because we must coexist, but because we must stick together. We must get along, because in here, all we have is each other.
Along this journey, I have met many wonderful people, some of whom have committed, on paper, truly heinous crimes. But who am I to judge? To say I would never befriend a person because of something they’d done? Look at what I’ve done! Though my victim was an adult, she is dead because of my actions that night. What makes me better than any of them, when we all sit here in the same place with the same number of digits on our identification cards? Nothing at all.
We eat together. Pray together. Laugh together and cry together. We form friendships that are long-lasting with people we couldn’t have imagined knowing on the outside who have become closer than family. We are all one another has at times. And so we make the best of what we have. We have to, if we are to survive the culture shock. We come together out of necessity and loneliness, and stay together because we understand. We are more than what’s on paper. We bridge the gap so we won't drown.
Chanell Burnette is a 43-year-old mother of two sons and a grandmother of one. She has been incarcerated for nineteen years, but her lifelong dream has not changed. She seeks to be a world-renowned author, transforming lives through the power of the written word.
