I’ve Served Time in Prison. Sheltering in Place is Terrifying.
Struggling with “that caged animal feeling” during the coronavirus pandemic.
A few months after I got out of prison, a car pulled up outside my apartment. I panicked. It was white, with a dark stripe down the side: a patrol car. Surely, I thought, this was it.
The police were here to arrest me. They’d call my parole officer, and he’d send me back to prison, to a world of handcuffs and isolation, a place of barren rooms and boredom.
Never mind that this did not make any sense. I’d scrupulously followed all the rules of parole, from curfew to travel restrictions. I had no traffic tickets or warrants.
