fresh out of the slammer (rojie’s version)

LINK: fresh out of the slammer (rojie’s version)

Currently listening to: Fresh Out of the Slammer – Taylor Swift

Gray and blue and fights and tunnels
Handcuffed to the spell I was under
For just one hour of sunshine
Years of labor, locks and ceilings
In the shade of how he was feeling
But it’s gonna be alright, I did my time

Spiraling faster than ever downhill, that’s for sure. I was getting into trouble at school and I was influencing my brother to act out too. This got me nowhere but a one-way ticket for the two of us to the Motherland. Straight to the reformatory juvenile camp with others who have committed felonies and misdemeanors.

Half of the teens in there were from the U.S. and the other half were native Koreans. If I didn’t have trust issues before, I surely had that along with PTSD. We all had a shared trauma of being there. It was pure hell.

Our days started at the crack of dawn, or should I say crack of despair. We would wake up at 0500, run for two miles, then eat breakfast. After we ate, we were forced to do manual labor for most of the day. They had us working like dogs for 12-16 hours in the blazing sun. I’ve never been so damn tan in my life.

And let’s talk about the gourmet cuisine they served us. Our chow consisted of rice, egg, and kimchi for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So you can only imagine how emaciated I must have looked after being there for a several of weeks. Forget about Michelin-starred restaurants, this place was serving up a Michelin-starvation experience.

Communication with the outside world was limited. I was allowed to make one phone call a day, and I would always call my grandmother. Talking to my parents was out of the question—they were the ones who sent me to this shithole in the first place. I would cry for 10 minutes, begging my grandmother to pick us up and take us back with her. We were stuck in the middle of some desolate farming town, far away from any semblance of civilization.

The living conditions were no better than the food. The females all slept in one room, on the floor. The same went for the guys. Privacy? Forget about it. The bathrooms were open, with no doors to shield us from the judgmental gazes of our fellow inmates. It was a fucking community bathroom. Just what every teenager dreams of.

Those who acted out were beaten and tortured in front of us. There were a few who were shipped out to a local farm to slaughter animals for hours on end. When they returned, they had a flat affect and barely spoke. We asked them what happened to them and their response was, “I don’t want to talk about it.” That’s when we knew it was even worse for them.

When my parents finally picked us up, I was a walking ball of trauma and anger. The experience had scarred me in ways I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. But amidst the darkness, there was a glimmer of something positive. This hellish ordeal had forced me to think faster and harder than ever before. It gave me the fury to succeed in my future endeavors and it reminded me that I could survive anything.