In reflecting on my personal experience with the revolving door, I’ve analyzed my path over and over again.  I’ve thought about the level of commitment that I had towards my freedom when I first left prison.  I’ve thought about the goals and objectives that I had and how I worked to achieve those goals. I’ve thought about the plans that I made, the steps that I took, and the successes that I achieved.

I have also reflected seriously about my failures.  My father told me once that there’s not much education in the second kick of a mule. I relate this experience with the revolving door to my father’s saying, but I am adamantly seeking education and understanding in why I returned to prison.  I must break this cycle now before I find myself so embedded in the insanity of recidivism that I lose the opportunity to completely break myself free from it.

My initial prison bid made me older.  This prison bid made me wiser.  When I was released from prison after five years, I believed that I knew what I had to do to stay out.  I set realistic goals.  I built a network of supportive people including an AA sponsor and an AA home group.  I became involved in SMART Recovery. I founded Steered Straight and traveled the tri-state area speaking to thousands of youth in schools about the dangers and negative consequences of drug use and thousands of men and women in halfway houses about staying out.

I established stable employment and worked hard to clear up my outstanding debt and obligations and to establish credit.  I had plans and I put my goals in writing.  I believed I was prepared to stay out of trouble.  I believed I knew what it would take for me to remain free.  But I didn’t sincerely and without reservation apply every aspect of my knowledge and understanding to my own life.

I had carried a powerful message,

but I failed to heed my very own message.

I knew what factors led me to prison in the first place, but I mistakenly believed that those factors didn’t exist any longer.  At the top of that list was the very thing that led to my return through the revolving door; Addiction.  Having stayed clean for seven years, I thought that it would never be a factor again.  But I was wrong.

This past year, there were two people with two statements, which have influenced me more so than any other statements have through this entire ordeal.  First, was a woman on the Parole Board who considered me for parole, but denied me at that time.  Ms. Washington told me, “Mr. DeLeon, you of ALL PEOPLE should have succeeded.  You of ALL PEOPLE should have stayed out.  You of ALL PEOPLE should not be back before us today”.  I knew this fact every bit as much as she did, even more so.  But hearing it from the one person who had my freedom in her hand was like hearing it more loudly and more clearly than hearing in my own head.

There hasn’t been one day since that first Parole Hearing where I haven’t thought about her statement.

I absolutely was that person she described who should have never returned through the revolving door. I myself also believed that I was that person.  I thought that I had the tools and resources to execute that plan.  And I did – but only for three years.  What I didn’t realize  - or more accurately said, what I “thought” I knew – was that to execute that plan successfully, I needed to continue to do it daily, and I needed to do that, perennially, for the rest of my life.

As an ex-felon, there’s no destination.  There is no proverbial “mountain top to reach”.  Life after prison is a continual climb! There’s no reaching the top.  There’s no “moment of complacency” where you can sit back and allow life to steer itself.  Success belongs to those who never give up, but I forgot that important fact.

An ex-felon can NEVER stop working the plan, and the plan needs to continually be under review and improvement to enhance and further one’s ability to stay out of prison.  When I was released from prison, I had the plan to succeed and set out on the path that would keep me out of prison.  I, simply stated, stopped working that plan.  Ms, Washington was right.  I was the one person who should’ve never came back through the revolving door.

The second person that made the most influential statement to me this past year was my father.  He’s always been supportive to me and his love for me has never wavered.  My drug use and my related failures in life caused by my drug use has brought him bitter disappointment and has directly affected and impacted his life in highly negative ways.  But, he’s never stopped loving me and more importantly, he’s never stopped believing in me.  He doesn’t sugarcoat anything and always tells me the truth – especially when I don’t realize that I need to hear it.

He told me in a letter that, “this time, your mistakes were made by a man who knew better”. I’ve retold myself this statement morning, noon and night ever since opening that letter.  It’s given me more direction.  It’s helped me to understand that I need more than just the knowledge and know-how to stay clean, stay on the right path, and stay out of prison, and that since I then became a man who “knows better”, I must be a man that “does better” ...  As I said, this bid made me wiser.

What’s changed for me now as I once again prepare to be released from prison, is that I understand why the door revolves, and more importantly, why it revolved for me. I more sincerely understand my Message, and I more intimately understand that it’s a Message that I cannot ever fail, because now I understand that the Message, is Me.

I have a different kind of plan, one that is continual and life-long, and a journey without a destination of complacency.  My plan has goals to achieve and objectives to meet, but it doesn’t ever stop.

I don’t want to only stay out of prison for a period of time.

I don’t want to again stay out of prison for three measly years.

I want to stay out of prison for the rest of my life.

This time the revolving door stops revolving for me.

B. Michael DeLeon
March 14, 2005