Why My First Thanksgiving in Prison Was The Best One I’d Had In Forever
Thanksgiving was not the worst holiday in prison but, looking back, I think maybe it was the saddest.
Behind bars, the best holidays were usually the ones that had been the least exciting in the free world—things like Labor Day, Memorial Day and Super Bowl Sunday. Times when we didn’t miss our families as much, when it didn’t feel like an entire season of celebration was continuing without us.
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Still, in some sense, my first Thanksgiving in custody was better than the ones before it, and selling drugs to feed my habit. Back then, most of my holidays were a druggy blur, save for the occasional near-disaster—like the year a housemate got chased down the street with a baseball bat and had to spend the rest of the day in hiding because he’d urinated on another guy’s coke stash. I was too high to be bothered by it at the time; it was just another crazy drug story. But if I’d been sober enough, it might have seemed sad and lonely.
