MacKenzie K.

I wanted to stop, but nothing was actually going to help me stop using drugs: not losing my job, my family, or even overdosing and almost losing my life. I didn’t care about anyone, anything, or myself. Just drugs.

I’m not going to say I had this big epiphany coming to prison. All I know is that I had a heart full of hate. A heart filled with guilt. I could do the seven years. What I was putting my family through, though, that’s what truly tore me up inside. I feel good about the fact that I have shed the anger that I had for God, for people from my past. The hatred toward myself.

For as long as I remember, I have had these tapes that I played over and over, like a mantra. “You’re not good enough. You’re not worth it. You’re a piece of shit.” It was just something that I lived with and didn’t talk about.

Dr. Lee Perlman’s Non-Violent Communication course (ES.9114) really helped me see things in a different way. Never once did I think of these mantras as being violent. When I thought of violence I thought of something physical. When, in actuality, I was really being violent toward myself. In class I realized how important forgiveness truly is. I got out of class, and told my mother I was sorry. She told me she had already forgiven me, but I needed to forgive myself.

This is something that I’m still working on, like the negative things that I tell myself, but it has gotten easier and easier. I try and do things better today, than I did yesterday. When I think of the past, I try and think of all the good things that I’m doing now, instead. It’s progress. Through it all, though, just talking about things I had gone through and was going through, with people in class, I don’t quite feel as alone as I thought I was. I’ve made connections with people, that I will never forget.

It doesn’t matter what I’ve done. What the next person has done. We all have a past. We all struggle, whether you’re sitting in prison, or you’re an MIT student.

– MacKenzie K., 2021