It’s Not a Kink.

There are pieces of me that only certain people know. Like a mask I wear in front of some and vulnerable parts of me that I show to others.

They say people become who they truly are around those they love.

The whole “I glow differently.”

As weird as it may sound. My “I glow differently” happens around people who have spent time in prison.

So, Let’s talk about it.

The stigma that surrounds the inmate population is in my opinion just as bad as the stigma that surrounds the addict population. Somewhere throughout the years it has been written in societal norms that felons are bad, if you’ve ever done time in jail/prison you are a bad person who does bad things. In reality, most of the people I know that did time in prison were there for nonviolent crimes, crimes that typically go unpunished, crimes that most people commit in their lifetimes and just don’t get caught, crimes that unless they said “I got caught doing XYZ and went to prison” people wouldn’t even think twice about. Yet, they are stigmatized based on one bad choice. Not to say some people who go to prison are bad, and absolutely do bad things. But judging an entire population of people based on the actions of a few just doesn’t sit well with me. (in any situation)

Most of my acquaintances, partners, and closest friends have been in prison.  It’s a running joke that I have a checklist of whom I will associate with and top of that list is “is a felon.”

This weekend, I spent some time discussing the “Why” behind that with a new acquaintance.

His automatic thought was “it’s a kink, right?”

And as funny as that is, it truly is not.

My reason is this… “daddy issues.”

It’s a lot easier than saying everyone in my life who was put there to keep me safe failed me. When truthfully that’s the reason.

When I was a child experiencing all the trauma I went through, all I wanted was one person who would protect me. One person who I knew would save me, go to the ends of the earth for my safety. I never had that. I never had a person who thought I was worth fighting for, a person who was willing to stop what was happening to me, and to fight for me and my safety. That included my parents and more specifically my father, who I looked at as the protector, because I was “daddy’s little girl”.

However, as an adult I have found those people. I have found the people who go to the ends of the earth to keep me safe. I have found the people who will drop everything because I made one phone call, and they will be there to be my safe space, I have found the people who I can feel safe around, and vulnerable with. The people who I needed when I was younger. Those people are typically felons.

I shared a post on here the other day that said “ladies, it’s fell in love not felon love”. I made sure to add that “I guess I missed the memo.” Because truly I did, the people I love the most are felons, my partner is a felon, the ex-husband a felon, all of my close friends- felons., Jade- a felon. These are my people. The people I glow differently around. The people who see me in my most vulnerable states, the people who I can let my guard down around, the people who know all of the horror stories about my life, but don’t judge me because of them, the people who know that I will have their back when shit gets hard, and the people who always have my back when I need them the most.

I crave the ability to feel safe in my body. I crave the feeling of being safe when I go out to a bar, when I go somewhere new, when I am surrounded by people I don’t know. Safety is something I truly never had when I was growing up.

If you’ve never studied psychology, Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who developed the hierarchy of needs to explain self- actualization. This hierarchy of needs focuses on the needs that HAVE TO be met for a human to truly grow and progress throughout life.

The base of the pyramid covers psychological needs- food, breathing, water, shelter, & sleep. The things that are required to keep you alive. Once those things are met, you move to the second part of the pyramid which is safety & security- health, property, family, and overall, the feeling of safety and security.

If those needs are met, you are then able to advance to the love & belonging part of the pyramid. Which includes the ability to form a sense of connection, building relationships and friendships and carrying out acts of intimacy.

So, put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Not until I was an adult, and I could form my own sense of security and safety, was I able to access step three of the pyramid. Not until I was able to form safety connections on my own, learn how to feel secure in certain people, was I able to move onto forming healthy relationships with others.

These needs are usually provided in childhood, by our parents, which allows us to move up the pyramid with our overall growth as we age and mature. But for me, I began forming that around the age of 15, with the people who I used drugs with, with the 30-year-old men I was hanging out with because they “cared” about me and because I felt safe with them, with the drug dealers who “looked out” for me when bad batches were going around, in the people who ended up being felons.

 With the people who kept me alive in a time when all of my friends were dying, in a time where I was living on the edge of being alive and not, when I honestly didn’t even know if being alive was actually what I wanted. Through them, I found a sense of loyalty I had never had before, a sense of safety and protection, a sense of friendship that extended far beyond “hanging out” but rather helping each other survive.

These people who typically are looked at link the “losers” the people who won’t make it anywhere in their lives, the people who are typically judges and stigmatized. These people are the people who literally got me to where I am today, they are the people who motivated me to succeed, who celebrated all of my minor successes and still celebrate me in my major ones, the people who don’t ever give up on me, the people who say things to me like “I knew you could do it”, the people who praise me for getting out of the game, the people who are constantly labeled as nothing other than “a felon”

So yes, the number one thing on my checklist is “is a felon.”

It is not a kink.

It is because the felons in my life have given me the only sense of safety I’ve ever had.