Solitary Confinement

I’ve been in solitary confinement before. The first time I experienced it was my junior year in high school. Most people feel that solitary confinement for even the most heinous individuals is a form of psychological torture. Activist groups say that it’s inhumane. Those prisoners that experience it talk about how it can break a man in days, sometimes even less. My experience was much different. It didn’t break me it made me into who I am.

My experience wasn’t in an 11×7 jail cell. The space I occupied was 94 feet long and 50 feet wide. I could come and go as I pleased without any problems. But I was alone. When you’re alone the mind starts to play tricks on you. Sit in the dark alone for five minutes and you’ll swear that you saw something move, or that someone might be in the room with you. My mind would tell me I should go home. It would tell me that I wasn’t good enough. It would mock me as I missed and missed and missed some more. It would pose the question , why are you here? And I always knew the answer so I would stay.

As years passed on the solitude started getting easier to deal with. Every once  in a while I would have a visitor. Some would stay with me for a couple of days, some weeks, and one actually stayed for a whole year. Eventually though they all left. I would always end up by myself. At the end of the day I knew it was for the better. I talked to my mom about it and she simply said, “not everyone is you.”  My mom has always had a genius way of breaking down a problem into one sentence. 

With that advice I started to embrace the solitude. My mind would tell me things like, “how could you not make it”, and “we should stay a little bit longer because you know there are others just like you”. So I would stay, and I’d use that time alone to work on me. Basketball was my solitary confinement, but not in a bad way. It was the one thing that took my mind away from everything else. It separated the negative from the positive, leaving just the positive. It became the safe haven that I could go to whenever I wanted.

After my playing career was over I missed being in an empty gym. I missed the feeling of being alone with just my thoughts, a ball, and a hoop. We all need that place where we can just get away. Away from the negativity, and away from the stress of living in the world we live in today.

Three years ago I was fortunate enough to find another place. A really good friend of mind suggested that I start writing blogs. When I write all I think about is the message, and nothing else. It’s like exiting off a busy highway to a road where you’re the only car on it. It’s relaxing and therapeutical for me. What do you have in your life that takes you off the highway?

 Don’t be a prisoner to your schedule, find time for you.