Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/category/ideas-and-opinions/the-beat-within/page/2/)
The Beat Within, a publication of writing and art from incarcerated youth, was founded by David Inocencio in San Francisco in 1996. Weekly writing and conversation workshops are held in California, six other states and Washington, D.C. Submissions and new partners are welcomed. Write to him at dinocencio@thebeatwithin.org.
He broke my heart. After that night I’d see him act the same bewildering way many more times. It was, I eventually learned, what too many beers did to him. But the first time my uncle hit me (I was 4 or 5 years old), all I knew was that something had changed. Not in him. No. Something had changed in me.
Foster home to foster home to foster home, etc. Twenty-six homes in total. One “family” to the next, passed on like the bubble in my mother’s tweaker circle.
People find it difficult to admit fault. We would rather receive an apology than apologize for our own wrongdoings. It is a position of power: having the ability to forgive someone or not, rather than being at the mercy of another, in a vulnerable position.
I want to share with you a personal story about the true practice of restorative justice and how it plays a part in my life.
I murdered him. I stabbed him 51 times in his sleep, and now his name likely evokes in people close to him funny, warm and wonderful memories of a man they still love. And then it evokes pain because they remember, they realize suddenly after a happy thought and a smile that he was brutally taken from them for no real reason.
I never said "no."
In fact, I said "I love you."
He said "No, you don't."
He also said he was going to kill me.
I don't know if I believed him.
When I took my first breath in this world, it was while being placed into the arms of a child herself. A drug-addicted and alcoholic mother at the age of just 16 and, needless to say, my mother was a very reckless, sad, incapable parent.
I thought that I’d grown into a man knowing exactly what it meant to love someone from your heart. I thought that saying the words “I love you,” like the rest of the world, would be enough to exchange those core emotions with another human being that you’d become attracted to. But what do you think? What is it to love if there’s no deeper significance in just the three words I love you, alone? Does loving someone or something enough set you internally and physically free?
Ten years ago I met my wife. We were high school sweethearts. We fell in love fast. Our love was like electricity. We were together every day. Things between us were great. She was the best friend I had always wanted. We stayed together all through high school, graduated together and moved into a home together.
You would think that walking out of prison after almost 24 years would probably be one of the happiest moments of my life — but you would be wrong — because it was actually one of the most frightening moments.