For years now, I have felt lonely and lost in this place.

For years now, I have felt lonely and lost in this place. I have been so seperated from that reality -freeworld that to see it on the news it was literally like watching a distant planet. The rules are different here. There is a society here that operates on principles that you don't know. I hope you never know. If you aren't careful you can be consumed by it. Absorbed into the walls, you become one with this hellhole.


I have been so divorced from society that I actually did not see video of the World Trade Center buildings coming down until two years after the fact. I didn't have a TV. I didn't even get one until after we invaded Iraq in 2003.


It's easy to be forgotten. Lots of people wrote in the beginning. People that I had vaguely come into contact with had these nice things to say about me and then there were quite a few that didn't have very nice things to say. But as the years rolle don, fewer and fewer people wrote . Folks moved on and had families and careers and lives. I became a distant memory. I accepted it. I was in a different place and for a long time, survival meant focusing on the here and now. You don't lose sight of this place for long. It'll be the end of you quicker than you can read these words.


This place is full of alpha males. If you aren't an alpha male, you damn well better get some of those traits fast. You have to be tough. You have to be strong. You have to be ready to fight anyone at anytime for any reason. And you have to be ready to do the same with yourself. So many days I have wanted the misery to end, for it to finally be over with. God, I hate this place. But you have to get up each morning running and put your mean mug on and pull that fight out of you and ride on, fight on. No matter how bad it is, you can't stop.


This struggle makes you hard. It 's made me hard. For the most part I have had to do this fight myself. I had to be tough, smart, determined. I couldn't let things get to me. I had to have tough, rawhide skin. I had to endure it all with a poker face that left me devoid of emotion. Emotions evince weakness here. No, none of that.


When I learned that I lost the 5th Circuit Court appeal, I kept my poker face. That's easier to do now. But what is extremely hard is trying to settle the consuming fear inside. For days, my insides felt like they were suffering from hypothermia. They shivered uncontrollably. It was exhausting to try and keep some measure of control. It would take my breath away and wear me out. I would pass out but not even sleep could bring relief. I felt the most alone then. And that is a fear all it's own.


Larry Matthew Puckett