A Certain Darkness

In my forty years of life, I have spent sixteen of them in solitary confinement.

In 2003, when I was nineteen years old, I was placed in captivity at Rikers Island, where the law of the land was violence and chaos. It was there, as a teenager, that I had my first experience with solitary confinement. During the three years I was imprisoned in Rikers awaiting trial, I did a few short stints in solitary confinement. The conditions were horrendous and inhumane. Dubbed many names such as “the box,” “the hole,” and “the coop” (as in chicken coop), the memories of this time will always haunt my thoughts.

In January 2006 I reached a breaking point. I was irate with the criminal legal system for holding me captive despite my innocence. I was enraged with my court appointed attorneys, who put no real effort into fighting to prove my innocence. I was furious with the oppressive guards, who brutalized us physically and mentally on a daily basis. During my trial, I took this bottled-up anger and revolted in the courtroom. I caused a melee, and when it was over I was placed in the “box,” where I was kept for a few weeks until my trial was completed. Then, like cattle, I was shipped into the custody of New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), where the next phase of my hellish nightmare would begin.

I remember my first day feeling my spine shiver once the metal cell door closed behind me with a resounding thud. The next sounds I heard were the shouting, screaming, and banging of my peers, and the combination of these noises assaulted my eardrums.

The cell was filthy. The dull beige walls were stained with dirt and what appeared to be dried blood. There was also writing over the walls. Previous residents had inscribed their nicknames and gang affiliations. Some left profanity-laced rants about their girlfriends who’d abandoned them, and others about particular officers who had wronged them. There was also a quote, “A certain darkness is needed to see the stars,” but I would not understand or appreciate its meaning until years later. Right above the quote was a skillful drawing of a little boy with sad eyes, and he was weeping. This picture has been imprinted on my mind ever since.

I felt more shivers run down my spine once I processed the state of the floor: dusty, stained, and racing with roaches. The sink was full of scum—only a trickle of brown water would issue from the faucet—and the toilet was inoperable, full of someone else’s urine and feces. The vent was caked with dust and also inoperable.

I was forced to live in that filthy cell for several days. Once my frustration mounted beyond measure, I began to rebel.

When the staff came around to do their head count, I covered the small glass window of my cell door with my T-shirt to obstruct their view. They gave me several direct orders to remove it, but I remained defiant. This led to them entering my cell by force. I knew that they were going to assault me, but in that moment I did not care. I was desperate. I could not live another day under those conditions. Five officers dressed in tactical gear stormed my cell. After I was tear-gassed, they proceeded to beat me with batons, punch me with fists, and stomp on me with boots. After this incident they moved me to another equally filthy and inoperable cell.

During the sixteen years that I spent in SHU, I was transferred to several different facilities. In each I was subjected to similarly inhumane conditions and treatment. Most had windowless cells with broken ventilation systems. They were all infested with vermin. They kept bright lights on within the cell all night. They all had brutish staff who abused their authority.

For many years I was oblivious to the impact that solitary confinement had on me. Then one day a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen or heard from in years visited me, and toward the end of the visit she told me that the charismatic part of my character was still there but that what stood out was how drastically I had changed, in both good and bad ways. She said that I had become more knowledgeable, militant, reserved, hypervigilant, somewhat bitter, and socially withdrawn. That night I stayed awake thinking. After a few hours of reflecting, I realized she was right: I had changed. How could I not have?

Solitary confinement is an abnormal environment. The way we communicated with one another—by talking out the slot in the cell door—is abnormal. The definition of bathroom is a room equipped with a sink and a toilet—so the reality is that we ate, slept, and lived in a bathroom. This is abnormal. During visitations we were separated by metal and glass partitions from our visitors, disallowing us to embrace or touch them. For some of us that meant no other human touched us for many years. This is abnormal. We used to only be permitted one hour of recreation a day. During this “free” time, we were put into small cages which resembled the cages at the zoo. This is abnormal. There was a period when I went four years without going outside, just so I wouldn’t have to be subjected to this.

But eventually, through the repetitiveness of daily routines, it all feels normal. This is the most abnormal thing of all.

Solitary confinement steals bites from the mind, heart, and soul every day, without you even realizing it. Eventually these stolen bites equal a whole piece of you gone. This confinement dismantles you and then reconstructs you, making you a product of this environment.

The realization of all this rattled me to the core. I decided to add my own layers to the construction process, so that I wasn’t built into the spitting image of this twisted environment. I took the initiative to keep a tight grip on my mental state to avoid becoming insane. I started to read, study, write, and exercise more, to help elevate my mental state. I did my best to swim through the murky ocean of depression, but there were times when I almost drowned in the crashing waves of helplessness and despair. The days in solitary were long, and my sleepless nights even longer. There were days when the isolation and loneliness were so unthinkable that I could feel my heart break, and hear my soul screeching within. I still feel compassion and love, but this extreme isolation left me desensitized and traumatized.

I often find myself reflecting on my inner strength, reflecting on my willpower, reflecting on my resilience, and how I survived because of it. A huge part of me was stolen from me over the years, but I continue to clutch tightly to the pieces of me that remain. Most nights when I close my eyes I can vividly see the drawing of the weeping boy in my mind. Reminding me to embrace my fears, embrace my pain, embrace my struggles, because a certain darkness is needed to see the stars.

_{Image: Mark Basarab / Unsplash}

Contributors

Troy Hendrix Troy Hendrix is an incarcerated New York–based writer. He has maintained his innocence for over two decades. Now forty-two, he has been in the prison system since the age of nineteen.

Topics

• Institutions & Practices

Tags

• conditions of confinement
• incarcerated and formerly incarcerated authors
• life without parole
• long sentences
• solitary confinement