Impossible: I Hate That Word

I was told that so many things were impossible. I was never gonna see my family again, that's impossible. It was impossible to get my child support dropped, it was impossible to get an LGBT support group started. It was impossible to get LGBT people recognized as a culture. It's impossible to get released. Everything that someone else can't do is impossible...

I don't even believe in the word anymore. It's disheartening when I hear other people say it. When someone tells me that what I am doing is impossible it serves as a driving force because I love proving that word wrong. 

Something else that's impossible is connecting the prison gay community to your community. I have been told that it will never work because its two different worlds. Many point to this blog as proof that people are not really to concerned with the gay community in prison. After all, there are so many road blocks. 

I know that a good blog needs to be posted daily and have content that people actually want to read. Sometimes my posts are very personal and seem to be more of a journal entry then an opinionated post on LGBT culture. But there are many obstacles, first and foremost my letters are carefully screened by DOC for security threats. I can't even talk about sexual matters and God forbid I tell you a story that even implies a threat to me. The post will never even make it to my family to post and I will be put in the hole immediately.

So there are many who believe that what I am doing here, trying to give people out there the normalcy of us in here. In prison there is love, hate, violence, abuse, care, empathy, change. We celebrate holidays and think about our families and what we could be and what we once were. We contemplate life and how to make it better for ourselves, sometimes guys do the wrong thing and other guys will go out of their way to do the right thing. 

What is possible is that we will leave this place and if we are not so scary to people out there then perhaps we could make a few more friends. It's not impossible for us to be rehabilitated. Some guys don't give a crap, some of us really care. Some of us really have changed. 

I have heard impossible to many times and I want to clearly state that nothing is impossible. I will keep writing every day, some days the posts will lag behind because people are doing their jobs here holding us accountable and rightly so, or sometimes its not always possible that people can post my stuff as frequently as I would hope, it's called life, the possible. 

I will keep on going and keep on writing because I believe in a world where we are all connected and we care about one another. It's possible. People tell me my ultimate goal is impossible, which is to end victimization in this world and I will spend the rest of my life doing just that. I believe that though this blog may not save the world, it's one little step on my big ole' journey. 

With Love
Jeff Utnage