by Damon West
Photo courtesy of The Beaumont Enterprise.
Winning the Spindletop 5K on 2/27/16 in Beaumont, TX.
CHAPTER 26
Three Tools to Begin Your New Life
THE FREE WORLD
Saturday, February 27, 2016
IT’S LIKE BEING A TIME TRAVELER. That’s the most apt description I have been able to come up with of re-entering the free world after nearly a decade in a maximum-security prison. So much has changed, especially with technology. More than ninety days removed from that hell on Earth and I am still way behind the curve. That’s okay. At least I can see the curve from where I am.
I currently sit in a park in Beaumont, Texas. I am within a few miles of the Mark Stiles Unit, my own personal hell. Living so close to this place has offered me a unique perspective on life, as I see it almost daily. Today I did not see the prison because I was too busy running in a race called the Spindletop Gusher 5K.
When I arrived at the staging area, at Lamar University, I became a little claustrophobic. There were over nine hundred people lining up to run. Having only been out of prison a few months, I still do not do well with people bumping into me. This was happening so much in the staging area that I felt like a pinball. Smiling away my frustrations like Mr. Jackson’s coffee bean, I was preparing my iPhone playlist for the 3.2-mile race when adversity hit. Not being totally adjusted to technology, I somehow deleted my entire iTunes music library. All my running music I had choreographed for the roughly twenty minutes it would take me to complete this race was gone in the press of a button. With no way to restore my music, I accepted this was a curveball, something not on my line. No worries. I had run all over the prison rec yard without music.
When the starting buzzer sounded, I took off like a bullet. Wanting to separate myself from the mass of humanity in the race, I got out ahead where only a few runners were moving. Within a few minutes, I was alone in the front of the heat, with only a guy on a bicycle to pace me. I yelled to him that my music didn’t work. He laughed. He kept a good pace for me. From time to time I would ask him where my competition was. He laughed most of the time and said he couldn’t even see them. Given my proclivity to not trust people that easily, I would sometimes turn my head slightly to see if he was pulling my leg. He wasn’t.
When I came into the final stretch, reality started setting in. I had won this race. Holy cow. Having never run a race before, I never considered I could win. But win I did. My final time was 19:29. The closest guy was about a minute behind. At forty years old and fresh out of prison, I had just pulled off a big one.
The euphoria from winning is like a drug. Actually, it is a drug because your brain releases endorphins. Yet this was not my first taste of winning. Not even close. I had been winning small victories since I stepped out of the Kyle Unit and into the free world on November 16, 2015.
* * *
After a night of zero sleep, my moment had arrived. I said my final goodbyes to D-Pod and my name was called. I was escorted down to the offices by the front gate and given clothes my family had brought me to change into. Jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Not having felt jeans since I was arrested in them on July 30, 2008, I touched the denim on the jeans and even rubbed it against my face and arms to feel the coarseness of the material. Euphoric recall took over and a hundred positive memories flooded my brain at the touch of the material. This was really happening. I was going home.
Changing into normal clothes was empowering. The only thing I specifically requested from my family was boxer briefs because I hated wearing boxer shorts in prison. Fruit of the Loom never felt so good. Once I fumbled around with the buttons on the jeans (I hadn’t seen a button in over seven years), I felt like I had just put on an Armani suit. Compared to prison clothes, it was. The T-shirt was a familiar green one Grayson had worn to visitation a few times. Grayson, being close to me in size, had donated all of my clothes for this day. How lucky was I to have this support and love? As the day went on, I would find out just how blessed I truly was.
After I dressed and got ready to go with a bag of all my personal belongings, a sergeant walked four of us inmates to the gate and said, “Gentlemen, when that gate opens, get on the other side of it before it closes and get off the property. Don’t come back. This is your last order.”
Without hesitation, I said, “Yes, sir.” Not that I had any difficulty following orders, but this would be the easiest one to follow of all that I received over the course of seven years, three months, and eighteen days. Not that I was counting.
The gates rolled and as I took my first step onto free soil, something weird happened. The ground felt different beneath my feet. The sky became bluer, the trees and grass greener. The air even felt lighter. Armed with the knowledge this had to be a trick of the mind, I still allowed myself to be carried away with the wonderful sense of relief these sights and feelings brought me.
I was free.
Scanning the parking lot for my parents, I spotted them off to my right and took off running. They were waiting outside the car and the three of us hugged in a tearful embrace. Breaking off the reunion prematurely, I ushered my parents into the car, urging them to “Get out of here before they change their minds.”
From behind the wheel, my father turned around and said, “You ready to go get that Whataburger, Damon?” My father had heard me talk about this first meal often enough that he knew what I wanted.
From the passenger seat, my mother looked at him and said, “Hang on, Bob, we aren’t going anywhere yet. I’ve got three tools Damon is going to need to begin his new life.”
I looked at my mother as if she had a second head. All I wanted to do was get out of the prison parking lot. And fast. Knowing there was no way to avoid this exercise, I asked her what the tools were.
In no particular hurry, she first handed me an iPhone. It didn’t even feel familiar, as phones had buttons when I was arrested. It was all black, with no sign of electronic life. I couldn’t even turn it on. She could see my frustration and told me she would show me later how to use it.
“You can stay in touch with the entire world on these new phones. They’re like super-computers. They have the internet, banking, social media, and a thousand other things you can do on them. There’s even a thing called FaceTime, which is basically a video conference in your pocket.”
Next, she gave me my driver’s license. I had found a way to renew my driver’s license from prison. From asking around among other inmates, I discovered this was one of the biggest obstacles to re-entering society. Checked that off my list. It felt good to hold an ID that didn’t say Texas Department of Criminal Justice on it.
My driver’s license, she said, would allow me to go anywhere I wanted. I could even borrow her truck until I could afford my own car.
“Contact with the world and a means to get around. What is the third tool I have for you, Damon? What are you missing?”
Okay, you have to know my mother to fully understand this moment. There was not a doubt in my mind this last tool of hers was something spiritual, something to do with God and faith. No way was I getting a toolkit for life without God being in it.
What she didn’t know was that I had her beat. Spiritually, I was covered. I had my Bible, my rosary, a better understanding of religion and spirituality than ever before and, most importantly, my faith in God was stronger than ever. I understood that God was driving the car and I was merely a passenger. I understood that God had revoked my driver’s license on the spiritual highway. Despite my anxiety about getting out of the prison parking lot, a satisfying smile crept into the corners or my mouth. After forty years, I had finally outsmarted my mother.
I told her I had outflanked her this time, that I had all my tools for God already. I named my program of recovery, my Bible, my rosary, my new faith, and my complete understanding that He was in control. “Because that’s your last tool, right, something to do
with God?”
She rolled her eyes. “Damon, you talk too much. Always have. Stick out your wrist, baby.”
Curious, I gave her my wrist.
She pulled out a bracelet that looked like a bunch of fishing hooks connected together, opened the clasp, and secured it around my wrist. “In our community, every man and woman who has attended an ACTS Retreat wears one of these around their wrists.”
She told me they wore the bracelets to both symbolize their mission to be fishers of men and women, and identify each other in public. There were hundreds, if not thousands of my brothers and sisters in Christ wearing those bracelets.
“And they’re all waiting to welcome you home.”
My eyes filled with tears at the beautiful and symbolic “tool” my mother had just given me. She was crying, too.
“Damon, I know how badly you want to find these ACTS brothers to start your new life,” she said through tears, “so I signed you up for the next ACTS Retreat at St. Charles, in Nederland, on January 14th. You are going to need friends in this new life. The right friends, positive peers. Baby, go to this retreat and find your friends.”
I was speechless. How in the world did I get so lucky in this life? I knew long ago I had won the parental lottery, but my mother had just raised the bar on unconditional love and knowing exactly what I needed in life.
Through my tears I said, “Thank you, Mom. I love you so much.” I hugged her and then hugged my father, too. “I love you, too, Dad. Let’s go home.”
We did not go straight home. First, we went by Whataburger. My mother stayed in the car talking on the phone to friends and family who had been awaiting word of my release. My father and I walked in and I immediately experienced what is known as sensory overload.
For over seven years, my eyes had been trained on the sterile institutional setting that is prison. No longer did my world consist of walls painted white or gray and concrete and steel structures bolted down so they could not be used as weapons. No longer did everyone wear a uniform that was white for the inmates and blue-gray for the guards.
Inside Whataburger, I was overwhelmed by the orange menu board. The shades of colors the customers wore were like looking in those sixty-four Crayola crayon boxes I had in kindergarten. My father could see something was happening to me when I froze upon entering.
“Damon, you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, Dad, I’ll be fine. Just give me a second to process everything around me.” I scanned the restaurant for danger, weapons, and secondary exits. There was nothing there. No tattoos to read, no people congregating by the color of their skin, no guards patrolling, no TVs blaring. Nothing. Once my brain caught up with what my eyes were seeing, my heart rate slowed down and I began to relax. I was not in prison anymore. This was going to take some getting used to.
Without a doubt, that was the best meal I’d ever eaten. My taste buds exploded with the flavors of the double burger with cheese, fries, and a chocolate shake.
On the way home, we made stops in Houston at the office of Ambassador Arthur Schechter, one of my old mentors from my political days, and my honorary godfather, Barry Warner, the sports radio guy from Houston with whom my father had been best friends since the Bum Phillips era with the Oilers. Both men wanted to see me the minute I was free. They had supported me every step of the way in prison as well.
Once done, we made our way into Beaumont. The different circumstances of this car ride and my last trip into Beaumont on a prison bus in 2010 were not lost on me. On this trip, I did not stop at the Stiles Unit. We kept going past that exit and arrived at my parents’ home. My home as well now.
I had never been to this house. They moved there when Hurricane Ike destroyed the same home they had to rebuild after Hurricane Rita. So much pain and destruction had been hovering over my parents’ lives like a dark cloud for ten years. But they are the two most solid and resilient people I have ever known. No matter what life threw at them, they always picked up the pieces, dusted themselves off, and got back in the game. True coffee beans, to use Mr. Jackson’s phrase. No doubt a tribute to their faith.
Their new house in Port Neches sits on the corner of two streets, directly across from my aunt and uncle’s home. If I thought back really hard, I am sure I played in this yard as a child when visiting my cousins, John and Shane. After pulling into the driveway, the first thing I did was go to the mailbox.
“You expecting mail already, Damon?” my mother asked.
“I am. I mailed myself a letter from prison. At the Kyle Unit, my counselor had me write a goodbye letter to alcohol and drugs. That gave me the idea to write a goodbye letter to myself from prison. Something to remind me of the journey, the pain, the misery my addiction and choices caused so many and myself. The pain I caused y’all.”
“Can I read it?” she asked.
My mother is notoriously nosy. She is probably going to be more so after all I put them through. This is going to be something I have to accept, as I contributed to this pre-existing condition.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “This is something private for now. One day I will share it with Dad and you. Not today, okay?”
She smiled. “That’s fine, baby.”
I entered my new home carrying all my worldly possessions in one bag and my letter in the other. It was one of those moments I wish my mother would have been recording on her fancy iPhone because I do not know that I will be able to articulate the emotion I felt upon entering my new bedroom. I will try.
First and foremost, the room was more than twice the size of my old cell. What was I going to do with all this space? There was a bed, a dresser, night tables, lamps, a ceiling fan, and a closet. It was what was on the bed that got my attention immediately. The bed was covered in clothes, shoes, food baskets, cards, letters and a sign that said, “Welcome Home, Damon.” I began crying. With my one bag containing all my possessions in hand, I walked over to the bed to inspect the scene. What I discovered broke me down even more.
People from our community, people from church, family members, family friends, and even some fraternity brothers from college had all been sending stuff to the house in the weeks leading up to my release. I went from having only the outfit I was wearing to having an entire wardrobe of various people’s donations. Too stunned to try anything on, I settled for touching the fabrics just to make sure it was all really happening.
Gift baskets with gift cards to stores and restaurants from one lifelong friend; a FedEx package from a dear friend in New York with dress clothes and ties; cookies from a woman at church. There was simply too much for me to register. My mother stepped into the room and saw how emotional this moment truly was for me, which made it emotional for her as well.
She grabbed an envelope off the nightstand and handed it to me. Putting my property bag and letter down for the first time, I took the envelope in my hands. It was heavy. It was from Steve Doucet, the volunteer chaplain and ACTS brother who was like a father to me at Stiles. “He wanted to make sure you had this,” she said.
I opened the envelope to see a ceramic cross inside, with little seashells, sand, starfishes, and other images from the beach. Across the front, it said “Footprints in the Sand.” On the back was the entire allegory. The same allegory my mother had on a plaque in the bedroom where I grew up.
There was a note inside. Apparently, this cross had been on the wall of his beach cabin, which was destroyed in a hurricane. While walking along the beach, he’d found it, intact, sitting on the sand. He remembered my story and wanted me to have this one to put over my new bed.
“Mom,” I asked, “what ever happened to the Footprints in the Sand that I used to have in my room?”
“Baby, that was destroyed when we lost our home after Hurricane Ike.”
I was stunned at the circle of life regarding Footprints in the Sand. The same hurricane that destroyed Steve’s beach cabin had
spared this cross but destroyed my parents’ home and my old bedroom plaque with it.
As overwhelming as the first moments in my new room were, when I looked at the clock on my iPhone, I realized my most important event out of prison was rapidly approaching. Time to refocus.
“Mom, how long does it take to get to the meeting?”
As an addict, it was critical for me to make it to an AA meeting in that first twenty-four hours.
“About twenty-five minutes. Can I go with you?” she asked.
This made me smile. “Mom, I would love for you to go. Can you drive? I don’t exactly know the streets that well yet.”
That night I went to my first recovery meeting as a free man. To be more specific, I went to Ray and Matt’s home group, the guys who brought the AA meeting into the Stiles Unit. It was in a church, in an area of Beaumont known as “The Avenues.” When I walked in, it was instant recognition. Ray made eye contact with me and both of our eyes began watering.
“Damon! You made it! You said you’d come to my home group and you did,” he said in his thick Boston accent. “Is this your mother? Please, Mrs. West, join us.”
My mother and I entered the small meeting room. Ray and I hugged. He introduced my mother and me to everyone in the room. It was my kind of crowd, too. A mixture of races, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and ethnicities. It looked like America.
“I just walked out of prison this morning. You told me hundreds of times, ‘Everything you put in front of your recovery, you will lose.’ I’m tired of losing everything, Ray. I need help working this program of recovery. I need a sponsor.”
“Say no more, Damon. I’m your sponsor now. But I must warn you, I’ll be tough on you as we work this program. Are you willing to go to any lengths to stay sober?”
“Absolutely.”
“Very good, Damon. I’m gonna remind you of that,” he said, and started the meeting.
