Everyone’s Got to Have a Dream

Writing my book was one thing. It was liberating, challenging and exciting all rolled in one. Publishing my book and actually seeing my name on the cover was something totally different. It was a very proud and surreal moment. But now, actually putting it out for anyone and everyone to read is only frightening. I also wonder how many judgmental people I call friend and how long after my book is out will I still be able to call them that. Or will I even want to?

On the flip side I wonder about what if I didn’t put it out. Who wouldn’t be touched that could’ve been? I live in South East DC and see its dirty side daily. But that doesn’t lessen my love for the place I now call home. If anything, it makes me want to make a difference and give back to the place that has welcomed me with open arms. My community could learn from my story simply because it is filled with men and women who have lived my story. As I sit here and type, there is a possibility, actually a real good possibility that there is a kid walking around my neighborhood with a gun right now. That same kid, with only a tiny bit of redirection could instead be reading my book and seeing what his future holds because it’s all in there. If there are any messages to be delivered by my book I want them to speak loud and clear of the power of change. I want to turn trigger-fingers into page-turners. In the right hands and at the right time my book could literally save my life again.

The kids of our neighborhoods need to see that there is a real world out there with consequences and repercussions for their actions and I feel that I have earned the right to tell them so. I say all the time that God isn’t finished with me yet. I make mistakes daily and feel I am far from a role model but I want to change – I have changed. Maybe not completely and maybe it isn’t even a change. Maybe it is just growing up. Whatever it is, I feel it and I want to share it.

My book is titled Time Served: An Excerpt of a Prisoner’s Life. It is based on my life before, during, and after four years in prison. It reflects some of my personal trials and agonies in a way that I feel others can appreciate. Everyone experiences loss and missteps along the way but most keep the feelings caused by them bottled up or internally shelved. The problem with that as I see it, is that those bottles and shelves are so fragile that the slightest reminder of the pain will cause them to crack and crumble. My book has helped me with my grieving process. I lost years. I lost youth and innocence. And after all of that, I lost my mama. I was completely filled with agony before I started writing. My book has helped me to decompartmentalize my pain and in the end writing it relieved me of more anguish than I even knew I had.

Television and ignorance make the average individual figure that prison is filled with gangs, rapes, riots and shankings. My prison experience wasn’t one filled with fear. In fact the scariest part of my prison experience was getting released. So many get out of prison and figure that it is all over. Life I mean. I want to show people that you can be a former inmate and still take care of your children, and go to work everyday, and pay bills and write a book if you want to.

If I have learned one thing about being an ex-felon it is that nothing good is coming. If we wait it out all that is out there for us are glass ceilings, closed doors and mediocrity. Sometimes you have to place all of your cards on the table and go for it. The only way for a convicted felon to get over the self-imposed hurdle is to do something big and this book is how I chose to do it.

- Marcus