NEVER HOPELESS

Locked in a small tiny room for months at at time is about as close to torture as I ever hope to get. There are times when your mind begins to play funny games on you and the walls begin to feel like they are closing in on you. It’s sort-of like an enlarged form of claustrophobia. You are in a 6×12 room but it seems to get smaller and smaller all the time and hope seems to seep away. Daily it seems to leak from your body, leeching through the concrete walls and seeping under the door until you feel desperate and yet almost willing to give up.

I was at that point. I could no longer hear the chants of “KILL YOUR SELF!!”, the banging on the doors, the screaming, and the lack of emotional connection. Terror and fear lurks just outside your door and it peers at you through the glass 4″x18″ window and watches you, waiting for you to crack. It waits and it watches.

It watches and it waits.

Hope? Home? Humanity? Love? Ha. These things have no place there and they are beaten into a reserved submission by hatred and violence. You go from having every opportunity for love, support, compassion, caring, connection, family and friends to having NOTHING. As an example, somehow, I had managed to get a hold of a rubber band and a styrofoam cup. At the next search, they were both taken from me as contraband. It seems stupid to say but I was crushed. It was all I had to my name. I couldn’t call home. I couldn’t talk to anyone. I was given three small meals a day and only could shower on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I had earned my position, and man did I get my moneys worth.

It was a particularly boring day and my hope of getting back to some form of “home” had just about gone away for good. I had thought several times that ending my life would make the pain of isolation, loneliness and fear of consequences go away and while that thinking is true, even then, I knew it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I had been isolated for about two and a half months and hadn’t had any good food for all that time. Out-of-the-blue, a man came to see me and it shocked me what he said and did.

Leaning in close to a small slot in the door, the man turned his body so his back was to the camera and stuck his hand into the slot and whispering “here’s a little piece of home. Thought you might like it.” In his hand he held something wrapped up in paper. I hesitantly took it from him and as he walked away, I unwrapped the small package and found a boston cream donut, fresh and delicious. My favorite of all time.

I savored that slice of heavenly home. It was the best tasting thing I have ever had. That small gift, given at risk of this man losing his job, lifted my spirits so high that it got me through weeks of difficult trials that came after that. When ever something terrible happened, I focused my thought on that little slice of home and soon everything was ok again. I never imagined a donut could have that much impact on my life.

Was there a time in your life that you experience a moment like that? Maybe you were the one that was used to give someone else a “hopeful home” moment. That man gave me hope and home in the form of a donut. He never imagined that his risky act would have such a lasting impact on my life. He did it out of the kindness of his heart with the full knowledge that I could never pay him back. I had nothing to give. So now, I will never forget him or the day that a donut became my little piece of home and hope came to visit me through the kindness of a man I barely knew.

I love boston creams because they are my little pieces of home.