Prep 9/12

I wasn’t ready for it to be over.

If I love the book I’m reading, I won’t allow it to end. In my head, the characters will keep having adventures long after I’ve finished reading, because it always hits me hard when things change. I don’t like the idea of things ending.

The second half of the book was equally hard-hitting as the first half, but for different reasons. By the halfway point, I had become not exactly desensitized, but maybe used to the gut-wrenching situations in which these men lived. But I had also formed a connection with each of them – I felt like I knew them, a little bit. And then the stories started becoming darker, more serious, more illegal, more dangerous. And it made me feel something, to be completely powerless to do anything, or even mean anything, in their story. I don’t ever feel that way when I’m reading fiction. I guess it’s just different when I know it’s real.

I waited with a mix of morbid curiosity and dread for their crimes to be revealed. And when they were, I felt mixed emotions. First, relief: I was glad that none of them were serial killers. Second, a different kind of relief: the knowledge that their arrests would eventually lead them to the prison chapel with Dr. Coogan, and their lives would change for the better. And third, a kind of dread: the looming threat of their impending release or transfer – that either way, their involvement in the project was about to end. And I don’t like things ending.

I don’t like things ending, but I think I’d rather read a happily-ever-after than watch characters – people – drift apart due to time and circumstance. The first nine chapters of the book followed a fairly straightforward format: Dr. Coogan meets with the men in the jail, and they write, discuss, and discover things about themselves and each other, forming bonds with each other and with Dr. Coogan. The second half of the book couldn’t follow that format, because the real world wasn’t content to let the story play out without interference. People transferred, people stopped writing, and eventually, the project became something very different than it had been in the early days. I wonder if that change in and of itself could be seen as a representation of the injustice of the justice system – it takes a good possibility (rehabilitation), and prevents it from happening easily or in its own due course. But the book, and all the stories, eventually were published. So in the metaphor, rehabilitation could technically be possible, although not easy or natural, in the current system (which, of course, is more focused on locking people up than letting them learn/grow).

It was hard to watch some things end unhappily , although I guess that’s just how life goes sometimes. There’s a reason a happily-ever-after is called a fairytale ending.