What Keeps Me Going In Here

- by Ryan

You wanna know how I get up every morning?
How I keep breathing in a place where so many men just... give up?

Her.

My wife.
My reason.
My home, even when I’ve got no walls around me.

Before her, I didn’t care if I woke up or not.
Some nights I prayed I wouldn’t.
Laying there in that dark-ass cell, wondering if anyone out there would notice if I stopped breathing.

But now?
Now it’s different.
Now I’ve got a woman who sees me. Really sees me. Not as a number, not as a criminal.
But as a man who’s still worthy of love—even when I don’t feel it for myself.

She’s the one who fights for me when I feel like folding.
She walks through hell with me barefoot and still holds my hand like I’m not covered in scars.
She is the reason I haven’t become just another ghost in here.

But it’s not just her.

It’s the hope she planted in me.
The kind of hope you can’t buy off commissary.
The kind that survives lockdowns, write-ups, lies, and abandonment.
Hope that whispers, “This ain’t the end of your story.”

It’s the writing.
These words? These are my lifeline.
They’re how I bleed without bleeding.
It’s how I scream without raising my voice.
Because when I write, I feel like someone might finally hear me—might finally understand what it’s like to be stuck between who I was and who I’m trying to become.

It’s growth.
Books. Faith. Conversations with men who are still trying, just like me.
It’s looking at the mess I came from—parents who were addicts, being shot up with meth at 13 by my own father—and deciding that I’m not ending there.
I’m not dying with their demons strapped to my back.

Because the truth is:
If you let it, prison will kill you slowly.
It don’t need a rope or a shank. It’ll take your mind.
Make you forget who you are.
Make you believe you deserve to be forgotten.

But I’ve got something to prove.
Not to the system. Not to my haters. Not even to my family who gave up on me.

I’ve got to prove it to her.
To the woman who answers every call, writes every letter, holds me up from hundreds of miles away.
To the woman who saw me at my lowest and still said, “That’s mine.”

She’s the home I’m building.
The life I’m choosing.
The reason I’m done being a repeat statistic.

I’m not doing another bid. This is my last.
Ten toes down, I mean that.

I’ve got something worth coming home to.
And more importantly, I’ve got something worth staying home for.

Comments

The Beating You Weren’t Supposed to See: A Former AZDOC Officer Speaks Out

Let me tell you something right now — that viral 3-minute video Fox 10 Phoenix aired last week? That wasn’t the whole story. That was just the tip of the blood-soaked iceberg. As a former Arizona Department of Corrections Officer, I know exactly what you're looking at in that video. You’re seeing the tail end of a brutal, calculated beatdown that started long before the cameras started rolling. That inmate? He’d already been dragged, pummeled, and bled out — by the time he was being chased down the entire length of the prison yard like a damn scene out of a gladiator movie. Fox 10’s report referred to it as a fight that “spilled out into the prison yard.” SPILLED OUT? Like someone knocked over a soda. No — this wasn’t some spontaneous scuffle. That man was hunted . Let’s Break Down the Bullsh*t Donna Hamm’s Comment: “The inmates are running the asylum, and that's not what the taxpayers in Arizona are paying for.” Newsflash: the inmates have always run the yard. Th...

Fighting for Ryan: The Battle for His Life Inside Arizona’s Broken System

I never thought I’d be writing this. Not like this. Not as the wife of the man I used to guard, used to protect. Not as someone on the outside screaming for help that should’ve been automatic on the inside. But here we are. I used to serve this system. Now I’m exposing it. I used to wear the uniform. Sixteen hours a day, six days a week, I walked those same yards. I protected inmates, respected them, loved them—because I knew most of them had never known compassion a day in their life. I saw their pain, their potential, their humanity. And now? Now I’m fighting like hell for the one who stole my heart behind those very walls. My husband is being failed. Deliberately. Repeatedly. Brutally. For days now— too many days —my husband has been locked down in complete isolation under what they call “observation.” No family contact. No personal belongings. No consistent monitoring. No treatment plan. What he’s getting instead? A blanket and a pill. They’re trying to medicate h...

Fighting a Whole Prison System: One Wife's War for Justice

Let me tell you what it’s like to go to war—not with guns or bombs, but with phone calls, legal documents, and a heart that refuses to give up. I’m not just fighting for my husband—I’m fighting against an entire prison system built to wear people down until they give up. But I won’t. I haven’t. And I never will. My husband is incarcerated in Arizona Department of Corrections. And what started out as a mission to simply advocate for his safety has turned into a full-scale, nonstop battle with a system so corrupt, so broken, and so indifferent to human life that some days, I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Where do I begin? Maybe with the time he was brutally attacked by another inmate and had to go into protective custody. Or when they transferred him from Red Rock to La Palma without notice, like a pawn on a chessboard. Or the multiple times his PC requests were denied, despite evidence of credible threats—and then used against him to accuse him of making false allegations. The...

From Guard to Wife: My Journey in the Shadows of the Justice System

Search This Blog