“It just might, Aspen. I mean, you’re going to a prison. Are you actually insane? I’m serious, by the way. In. Sane. The opposite of sane.”
“I’m well aware of what the definition of insanity is.” My responding eye roll isn’t seen by my best friend, Tanya, from where she’s hidden behind a phone call. “Psych student, remember?”
“Right, so you can diagnose yourself! I’m thinking you should. No school paper needs to be this in-depth.”
“It does,” I argue, swiping the phone up from the bathroom counter as I finish applying mascara. “It’s my master’s, so it’s important. This will decide my PhD study, and thus my future.”
Tanya’s dramatic fake yawn fills my living room as I carry the phone through it, heading for the front closet to toss on a coat. “Alright, well, text me after so I can reassure your parents you haven’t been murdered by your prison pen pal. Ever gonna tell me his name?”
“Nope. It’s confidential. You can read what he’s referred to as in my paper once it’s finished.”
She snorts. “No offence, but the day you get me to read your essay is the day aliens take over my mind. Isn’t your intro alone a few pages?”
“Five.”
“Mhm, that’s five too many. Good luck, don’t get killed, anddefinitelydon’t get preggo. I’m nowhere near ready to be an aunt. Besides, the custody agreement between the prisoner and you… Wouldn’t want to see the paperwork involved in that one.”
Tanya is nothing less than dramatic on any given day. “You’re thinking of conjugal visits, and no, that’s not what’s happening. I’ll text you this evening.”
“You better.”
She hangs up, leaving me alone with my thoughts and away from other people’s judgement where I’m able to bask in only my own.
What the fuck am I doing?
Across the room, my gaze catches on my laptop open on the coffee table, its charging cord basically a hazard to crossing the room safely, with a spread of notes nested around it.
With a sigh, I head away from the door I really need to leave through to catch the bus on time and instead sink onto the couch. There, I remind myself of the exact reason I’m about to meet a complete stranger.
While I’m still quite a way away from finalizing everything—still collecting research, in fact—having the title page at leastmakes my work feelmore. More official and closer to a finished project.
ISOLATION AS A LIFESTYLE:
THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF LONELINESS ON SOCIAL AND MENTAL COGNITION
A lot of my research is centred on clinical depression and the isolation it often leads to, which means most of my subject matter focuses on those without a social circle and the elderly who have few supports. Outside of those groups, it didn’t feel like enough. Outstanding research papers delve into multiple topics and sources, while mine seemed too simplistic.
Back in early September, while watching a crime show where the murderer was being arrested and charged, it hit me.
Where the character would be going.
Where real-life killersdogo.
Prison.
Inmates spend some time around one another, but it’s a different kind of loneliness. They are kept away from the outside world and limited to small cells and fenced-in outdoor grounds. Everything’s a schedule, an intention—and nothing involves free will.
When very little research could be found within the university’s library, I brought the idea up to my thesis director, hoping she could point me in the right direction of where else I could possibly find literature on the subject. Instead of books, she forwarded me an email she received earlier in the week about a project the nearest prison was reaching out to the university psychology department to promote—a pen pal program where volunteers are matched with inmates to writeletters to one another. It’s meant to form bonds of empathy on both sides of the paper.
So, I signed up. From September until I decide to stop, I’ll be able to communicate directly with an inmate and, from there, gain all the firsthand research required. It’s perfect with a capital P, and when the email arrived with my match’s name, I couldn’t stop celebrating my thesis director’s brilliance that night with a bottle of wine.
Within a couple months, I’ll have enough research to end my enrollment in the project, and we’ll go our own ways.
On top of my notes are the letters I admittingly reread more than my schoolwork. They’re from my pen pal—from Cade.
That name.I had to rein in my thoughts when first seeing it and veer back into territory appropriate for the kind of connection I was setting up with him. Scholarly and nothing further.
Even though I really should be leaving, I pick up the letters that took me from an excited but terrified student to a woman walking the death march into prison.
