Hope is a deep word. For many, it relates to the “betterment of humanity.”
I define hope as a desire, a yearning feeling that regardless of how dark the sky becomes, there’s always an assurance that light is fighting its way through those shadowy grays and dark black clouds..
When I first arrived in prison, I had very little hope of returning to my family. Back in 1994, “Life Without Parole” meant exactly that.
Doing the time wasn’t too difficult. I grew up in the juvenile system. It took minor adjustments to fit into the physical demands of survival. The most difficult change for me was the emotional-spiritual transformation.
I adjusted to confinement. Getting locked up is part of the criminal get -down or keeping it gangsta. That’s how it’s romanticized in our dysfunctional thinking.
That’s why going back never feels shameful. Another trip to the halls adds to our rep, right!
What the halls didn’t prepare me for is doing time until my soul separated from my body.
There’s an automatic appeal that takes place after a murder conviction. One of the older convicts taught me how to lace up my Chucks (tennis shoes). He noticed I was getting legal mail.
He pulled me over one day and asked what I was appealing. After I explained the public defender who was working on my direct appeal he broke down what I’d need to contribute to the squabble for my life.
He told me, “Just because you got a lawyer don’t mean he gone fight for ya’ life like you will.
Made way too much sense to me. He handed me a Georgetown Law Journal and directed me to the sections pertaining to my conviction. Unbeknownst to me he was heavily involved in prison politics, and knew how impressionable and prepared I was to lay something down.
He said, “Just because you got LWOP don’t mean you will die in prison. These laws are changing every day. Don’t let cha down-ness be taken advantage of.”
I read that Georgetown Law Journal every single day. The phrase Constitutional rights kept popping up. I have very little understanding of what my rights were, but knowing I had some put a little bit of life (that my sentence intended to legally take from me) right back into me.
The first denial I got was painful. Not so much because of the denial. He prepared me for that. The court was my only hope of freedom. When they said, “No,” I experienced a deeper hurt.
Yes, the pain had many different levels. This pain makes you afraid in a way that disturbs the chemistry rhythm in your system. I guess the closest I can get to describe it is severe depression.
Even at that emotional all-time low, fundamentally I remained an optimist. I’ve always been able to find calm in the chaos. I see the good in the bad. The more I read the more I compared my situation with situations worse than mine.
I had LWOP, but I was better off than the fellas on Death Row. That becomes the easing factor.
This was denial used in a good protected way by helping me deal with no HOPE.
Understanding the struggles of others began to change my perspective. In some of the most deplorable inhumane conditions, people still found love, and compassion.
People still found ways to trust and empathize.
[Reading] Nelson Mandela helped me in my transformation tremendously! His story literally gave me HOPE.
it was HOPE that got us through Slavery, The Holocaust, World Wars, and The Great Depression. Of course I had to read about those events to understand the connection. That motivated me to study the U.S. Constitution and I understood the concept clearly.
Imagine the amount of HOPE that a piece of paper—the Constitution—held for those devoted their lives in service of its most benevolent interpretation. Those were the people giving hope to the hopeless through action.
Although it wasn’t inclusive of gender and other races, it represented an ideal that would come to represent all of humanity.
I had issues that clearly pointed to constitutional violations at my trial but they weren’t illegal enough to let me out. I lost HOPE in the court system.
When we can accept that the prison population is a majority of minorities then justice really is blind, when it denies who it benefits!
I maintained Hope even when I was sentenced to Hopelessness. These types of people fought to make sure criminals were embraced inside that “all men created equal,” ideal and I’d come to admire that.
I was completely prepared to die in prison, but the more I read Mandela’s Story, and the stories of other people overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds-oppressions, I couldn’t accept the possibility I’d die in a cage.
There is absolutely no hope in LWOP. It’s a cruel very slow torturous death sentence.
But I guess HOPE can be defined as the possibility inside the impossible that tomorrow will be better than today. That’s why caring is so important.
It’s that rhythm created through suffering that serenades the souls of those types who sacrifice so much to help ease it.
It can also be used to showcase our ability to persevere, overcome, atone—to show that those dark stroked of grays-blacks can transform into more gentle blues, pinks, greens, etc., and remain focused.
William Curl is serving a life term at Corcoran State Prison in Corcoran, Calif. This essay is published in collaboration with The Beat Within, a San Francisco-based justice system writing workshop.