From Prison to American Prison Newspapers Engagement Editor

“A few short years ago, a prison sentence would hardly have been considered a job qualification,” began my cover letter. I wasn’t committed to getting a job so soon after graduation. I could take risks.

I have no experience as an editor of any type. I’m a freelance writer, with my first piece publishing while I was still locked up. I didn’t even have the internet to be able to read my own words, though an uncharastically compassionate staff member let me see it on their computer.

I’ve taken exactly one writing class in my entire life. And yet I am now the engagement editor with JSTOR Daily over the American Prison Newspapers collection.

My lone writing course was in 2009 at Portland Community College. Writing 121. I was already addicted to heroin. I got a B.

I remember lying to the professor and claiming I’d just had a wisdom tooth extracted and was still taking Percocet for the pain. That’s why I’m falling asleep during lecture. An assignment that I banged out in the minutes before class inspired that professor—the one suspicious of my heavy eyelids—to pull me aside.

“You’re an excellent writer,” he tried to convince me. I dismissed it as placation or a tactic to increase my spotty attendance and even spottier engagement. I, to be sure, cannot write well.

Five fairly predictable years later, I found myself in prison. My first published work, co-published with The Marshall Project and Vice, was thanks to the tireless assistance of Debi Campbell at Families Against Mandatory Minimum sentences. I wrote about using a federal prison sentence as Spanish language immersion, since there were zero educational programs available to me. From that first essay, my confidence grew.

From the week of my release in 2018 through August of this year, I was an undergraduate student at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. My education bolstered my expertise and my confidence and taught me to see the world through a public health lens. Though never exactly aspiring to a writing career, I found I had much to say. I began publishing essays and op-eds, getting supremely lucky in my submissions.

Then in 2019, Charlotte West, a higher education journalist, interviewed me for a story about doing study abroad while on federal probation. Previously, I had been fumbling in the dark. In her, I suddenly found a journalism mentor. She taught me the lingo (nut graf is a real term), how to pitch, and use Otter for transcribing interviews. My accidental career took off and my portfolio grew.

Twitter, an odd beast, allowed me to connect with prominent academics across the country. Leo Beletsky, executive director of Health in Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University, plucked me from relative obscurity and then taught me how to be an academic. Or at least how to navigate within academia, going so far as to bestow the title of Research Associate upon me for my work with the lab.

I struggle with imposter syndrome. I did not study the craft. I surely didn’t go to j-school. I recognize that with doses of luck, privilege, and obnoxious tenacity, I skipped several rungs of the career ladder.

I read it over and over. My uncommon collection of skills and experiences were coalescing into what was a dream job of mine, one I never allowed myself to dream.

Still, I still never aspired to a full-time career in writing or anything related to it. After all, I have bills to pay!

Finally closing the chapter that had began the week of my release from prison, I was ecstatic to graduate this past summer. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a double major, Spanish (thanks, prison) and community health promotion, out of the University Honors College.

A judge and mentor of mine forwarded me a job posting sent to her by a formerly incarcerated law student with whom I had been published in a legal newsletter. The email came just days after I finished my Bachelors.

I had no particular affinity to finding a job. I’m writing a memoir and trying to finish it before I start law school. But the job! The description read as if it had been meant for me. It required a peculiar combination: a profound knowledge of the US prison system, skilled writing, a blend of academia and journalism, and deft use of promotion and social media.

Formerly incarcerated people are strongly encouraged to apply.

I read it over and over. My uncommon collection of skills and experiences were coalescing into what was a dream job of mine, one I never allowed myself to dream.

I applied. And much to my surprise, I got the job. I am now the engagement editor over the American Prison Newspapers collection with JSTOR Daily. The collection is vast and fascinating and presents endless opportunities for stories. My job is to get those stories written, read, and to show people why prison history matters today.

From our ever-evolving philosophy on what is the “purpose” of prisons—to punish or to rehabilitate—to subtle peeks into the humanity and creativity of incarcerated people through the decades, there is something for everyone. Visual and performing arts, music, poetry, parole, clemency, education and vocational training, mental health, medical care, and the real-life impacts of abstract political decisions, the American Prison Newspapers collection provides not only a glimpse into our past, but into our future.

Accepting this job that is prestigious by my standards has not been without its difficulties. Much of my identity was wrapped up in my lifelong experiences with adversity. I am now far removed from my past experiences, operating in spheres of society I hadn’t known existed. My imposter syndrome rages with the word “editor” in my title, the ability to commission freelance writers to write for us, and everything in between. Striking the balance between personal and professional growth while still maintaining true to my roots is an ongoing battle. But I am happy. And I am proud of the work I do.

Five years ago, society was not ready for a professional career based around someone’s imprisonment. Today, I have stumbled into a career I did not know existed. I do not feel tokenized, I feel valued for my expertise. Times are changing, thanks to the tireless work of advocates on the ground that has trickled up into some institutions. May they lead the way so that others follow.

Dear Justin

My Dearest Justin,

Why do I have seven years of reflection where you have nothingness? Why do I have life where you have death? March 28th, 2014. An end date to a life.

I imagine you slipping out the sliding back door as the police and paramedics showed up to my overdose. You called 911 and waited until they arrived before escaping, knowing you had a warrant, you risked arrest to make sure I was okay. You slipped out as I slept. Well, as I lay unconscious from a heroin overdose.

When I think of you leaving, I picture watching you slip out the back door into the summer night.

There were other times. There was the time I overdosed in your dealer’s bathroom after you cooked our shots too strong and hit me in the jugular after I shot out all my veins. You and Nick had to carry me, all six feet of me, down from the second-floor apartment into the car when the dealer panicked and told you to get rid of me. You dropped me on the stairs. Or maybe Nick did. I just remember the bruises on my back in straight lines, concrete stairs across my spine. You saved me then. I woke up in the back seat of my Subaru wagon, disoriented with a backache.

Or the time I overdosed after doing a shot sitting in my driver’s seat and you had to carry me — again, six feet of me — around the car to the passenger seat to drive us away so we didn’t all go to jail. You put a suboxone under my tongue and the antagonist effects revived me. Or maybe I just woke up.

Nevermind that those three incidents spanned only five days. You saved me each time.

I saved you a few times but only in a metaphorical sense.

The same week as the overdoses, when you’d started calling me Fallout Queen, you borrowed my car and never returned. You ate too many benzos, did too big of a shot, got lost on the freeway, ran my car off the road, and popped the tire. You called me 12 hours after leaving saying you would “be right back” disoriented. You didn’t know where you were. I got you to describe your surroundings and send me your location.

I got a ride all the way to Wilsonville and found you passed out in the backseat on the shoulder of I-5, doors wide open, one tire flat. I had to change the tire because you didn’t know how. You were too fucked up to even pretend to help. I was seething mad, but you were so innocent, so apologetic, so loveable. I forgave you on the spot.

There was the night before my mom died when you called me after being stranded after the last bus stopped running, dopesick and miserable. I drove on a suspended license to come get you, got you well, you slept on one couch and I on the other. In the morning, I bought you a train ticket out. You left your wallet at my house, ever forgetful. Twelve hours after you left my mom overdosed and died on her morphine. In one of the last sentences I heard you utter, you apologized for not making it to her funeral.

I tried to give your wallet back to you the last night I saw you. But you didn’t take it. We would see each other again, surely. Without question.

The police found it the next night when they raided my apartment. You never got your fucking wallet back.

I still remember the way you took your coffee. 8 hazelnut pumps, 6 vanilla. I still think that’s gross. I try to forget the period where you did too much meth and got really into InfoWars. Your favorite snack was King’s Hawaiian rolls. They taste like you, like those nights we ran missions until 3 in the morning, stopping at the 24-hour Winco to re-up on rolls using our food stamps. I still remember how much you hated ketchup. Or was it that you loved it? The memories of the mundane are slipping away from me, water flowing in between my open fingers. The crises, the intensity, those moments are seared into my psyche.

That October after you got out of prison, do you remember what I said to you? We sat on the Johnson Creek trail, the trail that raised me, where as a child I had built forts in the blackberry thickets and hunted crawdads in the toxic creek that always gave me a rash. We sat there at night and I begged you not to get back into meth like you had before. I thought it would be the death of you.

Then you, me, and your sister all did a shot of heroin without a second thought.

You are enmeshed in all the places that made me because you are part of what made me. But I avoid Gresham and Vancouver, every corner haunted by your ghost.

I had never known you to overdose. You introduced me to heroin when I couldn’t afford oxys, way back in 2008. It was an act of kindness, you watched me squander my hard-earned money on those pills. You showed me the frugal alternative so I could keep paying my bills. If I was a dope fiend, you were a guru.

They burst through my front door unannounced, in full SWAT gear and pointed rifles at my head. I threw my hands up in an attempt to not get fucking shot. They tightened cold steel around my wrists and told me I was being arrested for your death.

Your death. They said you died. Months later when I got the police report sent to me in jail as part of the discovery, I would read the section about how your body was found a hundred times. I deserved punishment. I deserved to suffer. I forced myself to envision the ants — always the ants.

From that day until now I have lived seven years full of trauma, tragedy, and joy. I, the Fallout Queen, the one you had to resuscitate on so many occasions. You, the one who never so much as nodded out.

Immortalized at the age of 26.

I am now 31.

Nothing about this is fair. Nothing about this makes sense. Why me and not you? If I would have died any of those times, would they have arrested you for my death? Maybe. Probably.

If I would have ignored your text, would you have overdosed all the same but off of someone else’s dope? Or would you be alive today, only as far away as a text message?

We did not choose this fate, but I am so sorry nonetheless. Everything I do, I do for you. They put me in prison and called you my victim. I fight so that others don’t suffer the same fate.

You only became a victim upon your death. When it was convenient to them. Before that moment they called you criminal.

Remember when they tightened the handcuffs on your wrists until they cut deep into your flesh, and you got MRSA in jail and they left you to rot? Or when the cops beat your ass and shamelessly posted your mugshot with your face swollen and bloody? You were the first person I ever knew that went to jail. All I did was put $20 on your books and you never forgot it! I didn’t understand it then. I do now. You taught me so much.

I was a good friend to you. I know that and take solace in it. You were a good friend to me. I know that and take solace in it.

You slipped out the back door into the night while I slept. You saved me.

I love you. I miss you.

Bathroom Bigots

Sure, I get strange looks occasionally in women’s bathrooms when wearing a mask and a hoodie. Sure, the employees at the VA called me sir three different times in five minutes on Saturday. But those are manageable and fairly innocent — if ignorant — oversights.

Yesterday I was called “he/she/it” and “that thing” by a bathroom bigot on a self-righteous mission to police my genitals.

I am a cisgender woman. Yes, I’m six feet tall with short hair and wear mostly men’s clothes.

From the time I was a little kid, other kids called me “tomboy.” I always preferred boy’s clothes to skirts and dresses, GI Joes to Barbie Dolls, Eminem to Spice Girls. Kids — especially mean little girls in the bathroom at the elementary school — would insinuate about my sexuality. (Turns out they were right.)

My gender itself has never been in doubt. It matches my biological sex and I give it no further thought. I’m completely content being a woman as long as I never have to wear a dress or assume traditional gender roles. I will wear men’s clothing and full makeup and there is no contradiction.

I am a woman, full stop.

Other people put a lot more thought into my gender than I do these days, which is really fucking weird. The masks made it worse but after that it plateaued. In the last few weeks I’ve noticed a worsening of the gender scrutiny, though.

Transgender people have been offered up by right-wing politicians to be sacrificed to the culture wars. Rarely are people bothered by individual transgender people. Instead, being trans is portrayed as some abstract existential threat. A threat to whom I’ve yet to glean. Many Americans may not know anyone who is out about being transgender, making trans people an easy target for this sort of abstractionized fear-mongering. It’s easier to hate people irrationally when you don’t have to look them in the eyes.

Enter the bathroom police.

Most commonly, women will gently inform me I’m “in the wrong bathroom.” It hurts me but at least they’re being sincere. They meant it to be corrective. I have never before experienced bigotry for the sake of bigotry. Until yesterday.

“What is that he/she/it over there because this is the women’s bathroom,” I heard shouted at no one in particular. She didn’t desist, either, even after confirming my gender. She kept on shouting about how this is the women’s bathroom, and she has a right to know.

My inner child was eight years old again, curled up in a bathroom stall, sobbing after yet another bathroom bullying session. My outward 31-year old self cried tears of rage.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to be trans. I’ve developed a phobic fear of using public restrooms, made exponentially worse by yesterday’s bigotry, and I’m cisgender.

Until I can wear a tank top again — I’d say until we stop wearing masks but that day is distant — I think I’ll just start holding it.

Political rhetoric has real-life consequences.

To the bathroom bigots masquerading as bathroom police: history will not be kind to you.

I'm Growing Old. This Was Not the Plan.

I wasn’t supposed to grow old. I was always going to die young of a drug overdose. Or by my own hand. Same thing.

I doubted I would make it to the 27 club, even. By my 23rd birthday I had overdosed a dozen times. After my mom died when I was 24, I held a gun up to my temple, finally done. Instead of pulling the trigger I pushed the plunger down on a heroin-filled syringe. The heroin kept me from killing myself in that moment. In other moments, the heroin was why I wanted to kill myself. But the desire to die predated the drugs. I was 11 for my first half-hearted uninformed suicide attempt.

I progressed through adolescence into adulthood with the knowledge it would all end soon. How liberating to never have to worry about wrinkles, aches and pains, repaying student loans, my credit score, or retirement. I wouldn’t live long enough to face any such grievance.

I lived with abandon, maxing out school loans just to shoot up more heroin and cocaine before dropping out again. Live fast, die young. I never envisioned having a family or settling down. It wasn’t in the cards. I was going to die young, it was fated, predestined. There’s a certain relief in never having to worry about long-term consequences. I vacillated between passive and active suicide strategies, from not wearing my seatbelt while driving erratically to mixing high doses of heroin and klonipin.

Death never came. Instead, I am aging. Looking in the mirror and seeing gray hairs and wrinkles is jarring. I spent 17 of my 31 years craving death. How can I be getting old when I spent most my life wanting to die? I don’t belong in my own life.

The pendulum of give-a-damn has swung hard to the other side, an over-correction. Now I compulsively check my credit score and fret over my millennial inability to purchase a home. I go to the doctor all the time, convinced I couldn’t have escaped those years of injection drug use unscathed. But I did. I spend hours Googling cosmetic procedures that I will never be brave enough to undergo. (Collagen fillers for neck lines, I’m looking at you.) I have tendonitis in my hands that flares up if I do anything laborious. Or type too much in one day. And what about my retirement? Should I open up a Roth IRA? I’m 31, should I have a kid now even though next year I’m starting law school? The clock is ticking! I’m so far behind my peers!

Incredibly improbable catastrophes befell me in rapid succession. Now I see improbable catastrophes lurking around every corner. Preventing future tragedies by controlling all possible variables dominates my life. Check the air in the tires, drive defensively, buy the insurance, exercise, eat healthy, feel suicidally guilty when you don’t, don’t smoke, pay your credit card off weekly, schedule, plan, be prepared for emergencies. I’ve condensed 13 years’ worth of adulting and associated worry into three years. It’s fucking exhausting.

Controlling the variables is impossible during a pandemic. I’m trying to reactivate the radical acceptance of uncertainty that I learned in jail. Occasionally I succeed.

I was a lot more fun when I knew death was near. Or maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was just reckless and confused excitement and danger for fun and happiness.

I was 26 before I considered giving life a chance and 28 before I committed to being alive. If suicidality is a spectrum, I never get below a four. These days the thoughts of suicide are fleeting, irrational, no longer all-consuming. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

I created a life worth living, a life with a purpose, surrounded by love. Somehow successful at a career I never imagined, I find myself living a life I never could have predicted. Things are good and that is bizarre.

I still have no fear of death. It is impossible to fear the very thing you sought for years. Every time I fly, I hear 50 Cent’s voice in my head during take-off and landing. “If I die today, I’m happy how my life turned out.” Am I truly satisfied or just so detached I can’t care? To be determined.

“What is your legacy going to be, Morgan?” I hear my mom’s voice in my head, a desperate mother admonishing her strung-out daughter during her final weeks on Earth. These days I’m thinking my legacy is going to be pretty good.

I am restless when static. I dream of a career where I get paid to globe trot and live out of hotels. That’s like getting a new life every few days. And yet I also started dreaming about having a family and a home. I found a partner I hope to grow old with.

Grow old with. What a concept.

Three years into the recognition that it’s happening, I cannot yet accept it. I agonize over every sign of aging. They feel out of place, like I’m looking at someone else. Will it get easier as I adjust or worse as I get noticeably older?

I am a set of contradictory desires and thoughts. But I am alive and want to be alive. I assume that’s a given for most people. Not for me. It’s an accomplishment.

Pardon the emotional choppiness of this piece. It’s not a literary masterpiece. It’s just me trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense.

New Normals

Pandemic reflections: The loss of control was the worst. The unpredictability. It felt like jail, like prison. I couldn’t shake the feeling. But I realized that the “new normal” includes a certain level of moderate unpredictability. It’s not the kind of unpredictability we felt in March, panic buying groceries because of the impending apocalypse. It’s a baseline level of moderate unpredictability that is somewhat predictable. I guess that’s comforting.

Lessons from Incarceration - My Newest Piece

The pandemic has inspired feelings of loneliness, dread, loss of purpose, and uncertainty. Those are feelings I’ve felt before and in this piece on Medium I share how I coped with them from jail.

Three months after the death of my mom, I was arrested for the accidental overdose of one of my best friends. Kicking heroin and grieving in jail, I was told I was going to do a decade or two in prison. That became my new reality for the next 21 months. Lessons abound.

COVID-19 and Why I Am in Mexico

Everything feels surreal. Life seems like a movie. The world is in crisis, unprecedented containment and mitigation measures have been put into effect. There is a sense of dread, of doom. School has been cancelled and will remain cancelled for months. The economy is strained and will experience ongoing disruption. Capitalism, functioning as intended, has further distressed the economy with price hikes. Unintentionally, the system has produced widespread shortages.

Supply was disrupted in China. Like exporting our plastics for recycling, we relied on China. Cheaper labor and cheaper materials resulted in cheaper products. Capitalism likes cheaper products, so even while squawking about “bringing jobs back” we refused to pay more for domestically manufactured products. We never created a domestic industry supply chain because it was not economically viable as long as we imported vast quantities of goods from China. American production capacity was diminished in favor of cheap of imports. This reality is juxtaposed with our supposed preference for “American manufacturing.” Nationalistic ideals are just that, ideals, if not backed up by the willingness to pay more money. Ideals deteriorate into hollow rhetoric when not expressed through actions.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on industry in China and many of the products that are facing surging demand are simultaneously facing diminishing supply. I’ve never taken an economics course, but the results are predictable. Demand is so surged that even products with unaffected supply are facing shortages, shortages then causing hoarding which is causing more shortages which cause more hoarding, ad infinitum. The store shelves are bare of the most in-demand products, from medicines to cleaning supplies and canned food.

There is a fissure in the Americans’ perception of COVID-19, caused by disparate media reports, polarized partisan politics, and the promulgation of conspiracy theories. I broke many of my own, “Do Not Engage” rules when it comes to politics and partisan opinion and made several posts across social media. Engaging in polemic debates previously violated my own rules, but I draw the line here. Pandemics are non-partisan. There are no alternative facts. Very little is up for debate.

I tried to see if there was any way to get Myriah out of prison and onto trans leave as her trans leave date is in April, but as expected, there is not. She is categorically barred because of her charge, despite her judgment declaring her eligible. COVID-19 will be a disaster in jails and prisons. 

According to our government, Myriah serving 77 months in prison is justice. Released four months early would be akin to a 73 month sentence. What difference does it make to the state, 77 versus 73 months? Do those four months really make the difference between exacting justice and not? What they do do is endanger her life. She is an a vast and crowded open dorm in Coffee Creek minimum. They will endanger her life to extract the final 5% of her sentence from her—4 short months. They do this in the name of justice. The callous cruelty of this calculation is unfathomable to me. 

Selfishly I just keep thinking how grateful I am to not be in prison right now. It’s a good time to remind myself that if I were a person of color, I’d still be in prison. My life would be endangered. Just for not being white. Prison imbues you with a feeling of total impotence, as it is designed to. You have no control over your environment. And yet the people charged with taking care of you, your legal custodians, have no vested interest in your well being. You cannot take care of yourself and the people who are supposed to take care of you simply do not. 

The complete inability of the United States to test anyone is obscene. American’s disposable income has allowed high-level hoarding, strangely focused on toilet paper. Shortages due to hoarding have caused yet more hoarding behaviors, just like in prison. There is no such thing occurring, yet, in Mexico.

On March 6th, my girlfriend moved to Mexico. When we arrived I marveled at all the now-hiring signs, telling her, “everything will be fine. There are so many jobs!” I counseled her against getting a second Master’s, even if she could win a meager stipend. I had intended on spending Spring Break with her in Puerta Vallarta. By March 11th, I began doubting the viability of a vacation. By March 12th, I began panicking that I would not be allowed to either exit the US or enter Mexico. Classes were cancelled and moved online indefinitely. I changed my flight, moving it up one day, hoping to make it out in time. I advised my girlfriend to apply for that second Master’s. The economy is wildly uncertain. We need back-up plans.

Mexico will probably close the border and I won’t be able to cross between the countries, without risking being denied re-entry to Mexico, where I have decided to make a home until my classes resume in person. I am making this decision consciously. I am incredibly privileged in that my income is entirely based on attending school. As long as classes are online, I can continue to earn income from anywhere in the world. Everything other in-person event has been canceled. I am choosing to potentially get stuck in Mexico as opposed to getting quarantined in Portland, should it come to that. I worry excessively for my girlfriend, having just moved to a new country on the cusp of a global pandemic. Unlike the hilarious Twitter stories I’ve read from spatting lovers, we do well together in close quarters for long periods of time. There’s no one else I'd rather be cooped up with, in fact.

We are in deeply uncharted territory. I have chosen to navigate this from an unfamiliar land, but I have a “good feeling” about my decision. The apocalyptic grocery stores yesterday confirmed it. The bizarre mid-March snowstorm that delayed my flight for hours was the surreal cherry-on-top. I sat on the plane and watched the de-icer contraption run back and forth over the wing, something I’d never seen before in my life. I left Portland feeling like I’d barely made it out. Once we made it above the clouds, I could look down and see rolling hills of snow-capped forests. 

I’m going to try to write. I have two articles I’m working on and I am working on my book. I will have online classes that were never meant to be online classes. There will be hiccups and logistical nightmares. I will get to live with my girlfriend indefinitely, on my fixed income but where the cost of living is much lower. Infinitely resilient human beings will rapidly adapt to whatever becomes the new normal.

Healthcare is a basic human right. Mass incarceration is a human rights crisis. Human beings deserve housing. People need childcare, food, and paid sick leave. People need the peace of mind the economic security and a safety net provides. We need hope, options, and autonomy. Our health as a community depends on the health of its individuals—all individuals—we are inextricably linked to each other. Nothing occurs in a vacuum.

I have no blind party allegiance—just the pragmatism of someone who knows what it’s like to be marginalized and survive through successive crises. 

My worldview has been vindicated by a global pandemic. 

Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission

On Wednesday I drove to the Oregon capitol building in Salem. I spoke before the Senate Rules Committee and told them why I was seeking appointment to the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission. I was unusually nervous. It is still a strange thing to laud addiction and incarceration as job qualifications, but there I was. Drug policy has effected every facet of my life and the lives of many people that I love. The committee approved me and I was officially confirmed by the full Senate the next day.

Two years since my release from federal prison. One year since my release from Bureau of Prison’s home confinement. One week since my release from supervised release. Today I am officially commissioner on the Alcohol and Drug Policy Commission.

When the universe introduces you to a phenomenal photographer in a weird way

My life is odd. Good things have been coming to me in very strange ways.

I met an excellent photographer. Don’t ask me how, but it’s random. Come to find out he’s the photo editor of the Vanguard, my school’s paper. He took new headshots for me and there are so many good ones I can’t decide which to use. But in trolling his Instagram I see he’s just generally a startling talented photographer.

If you’re in Portland and need photos of anything, check him out. His name is Alex.

Find him on Instagram @the.photon.thief

Court

I spent all morning watching court proceedings at the Multnomah County Courthouse. Today I was there with the Explore the Law program, five years ago I was an in-custody defendant, cuffed and escorted to my probation violation hearing. Today I was just another undergrad with our tour-guide-attorney. Sitting through the drug court proceeding, I was outed as an “other”—not a defendant. Someone asked me if I was there as an observer. Have I moved so far beyond my defendant days it is somehow visible? What if I don’t want to lose that side of me? I had this strange urge to tell the defendants, especially those in custody, I’m just like you, I’ve been there, I actually know what it’s like.

I feel overcome with guilt when I walk out of the New Seasons with my bags of overpriced groceries and hop into my Prius. I know—or I assume to know—what the Street Roots vendor sees when he looks at me. I look like a yuppie. And maybe I am.

Why am I a recovery and re-entry success when so many others are not?

Things I still want to say

Today I was a panelist on the KATU news opioid crisis town hall. It was my first live speaking event. I have some things I wish I could have said, so I’m writing them here.

I went to jail for the first time in 2013. I was addicted to heroin but had recently been started on suboxone, but I was still using heroin. Knowing that I was going to jail, I got a letter from my doctor, where he extolled the importance of maintaining me on the medication. I was 23 and naive. I thought the jail would prescribe me my medication, because, well… It was medication. When I arrived at the jail, after the strip search, I began asking for my suboxone. They asked me why I was prescribed it, and when I said it was for my opioid use disorder, they informed me that was not a legitimate use and they only continue it for pain patients. I detoxed cold turkey for a week. I was then released, still feeling sick and with a diminished tolerance. I’m lucky I didn’t overdose. What I surely didn’t do was show up 48 hours later clean for my drug court check-in.

At the town hall last night Sheriff Reese told me the jail has updated it’s policies and no longer destabilizes people off of their medication. This is perceived as a radical and progressive policy—that is basic common sense. Not torturing people is radical, it seems.

When I was eventually revoked out of drug court, I received my first felony conviction. Up until that point I had been attending PCC for emergency medicine. I had gotten my EMT and was then working on the prerequisites for paramedic school. After the felony, what was the point? I could never work in the medical field, get a professional license, or rent an apartment. A felony is a lifelong brand that I could never overcome, no matter if I overcame my addiction. Hope for my future was dashed out of me. I resigned myself to a life and death of heroin addiction. Today I have hope but I still have felonies that I can never overcome. This is not a system based on rehabilitation and redemption. This is never-ending punishment.

People have to be alive to get clean. Portland’s harm reduction measures kept me alive long enough for me to get clean and be here today. I accessed syringe exchange services and twice was revived with Narcan.

Drugs come into the country through legal border checkpoints. The DEA admits this in their own literature. A wall will not stop the flow of drug. Where there is voracious demand, there will be ample supply.

America fiercely values independence. The other side of independence is loneliness. Substance use, suicide, and overdose are all increasing simultaneously. Meanwhile we live increasingly disconnected lives and stare into our phones hours and hours a day, foregoing authentic social connection. Disastrous coincidence or related phenomena, I am unsure. We are a lonely people. The antidote to addiction is community, love, and purpose. 


Life goals

1) I love to write.

2) I have had a very unusual life.

3) I have a story that I want to tell publicly.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told, “you should write a book.”

I’m doing just that. Books are much easier to read than they are to write, I’ve learned quickly. Despite having minor successes with some publications, I do not know how to write an entire book. Currently I’m just working on my book proposal, but writing sample chapters created unexpected difficulties. I stare at my pages knowing there are many hacks I could use to to make my writing “better”, but I don’t yet know what they are. I realized I’ve had no formal training on writing, ever.

I could really use a mentor. In lieu of that, I’m reading “The Art of Memoir” by Mary Karr and then I’ll re-read Dry by Augusten Burroughs, and I’ll do this while writing for at least an hour each day. I’ll keep this process up with other memoir-writing guides alternated by great memoirs until I figure out my life.

Being affected

In the piece I wrote for The Marshall Project while still in prison I said, “ I’ve learned that we care less about things we have no emotional connection to—that’s just human nature.” I was just reminded of this by reading an op-ed in The Oregonian from a young woman who admits she doesn’t actually care about the Amazon burning because it doesn’t affect her and she can’t see it. I appreciate her honesty—it’s far more authentic than the standard liberal nod and sympathetic social media post in response to international crises.

I was one of those people who made that sympathetic social media posts on Twitter. But because I knew the Amazon was burning before most Americans by watching my Brazilian friends’ Instagram stories. I am honestly and emotionally affected by the fact the Amazon is burning. It is affecting people I actually know. They’re breathing in its smoke. While I can’t see it and it’s not happening to me—the degree of separation is small. It’s happening to people I care about.

I struggled with drug addiction for years. My mom was career military and I too joined the Air Force. My mom was gay in the military before don’t ask don’t tell—forced to be closeted. I was conceived through artificial insemination and thanks to a DNA test I have met 4 of my many half-siblings. I get my medical care at the VA. When my then-boyfriend called 911 to save my life during my overdose, he was arrested for possession of heroin, fired from his job, and we were evicted. He ended up homeless on the streets of Portland for years. I cycled through questionable rehab centers that emphasize abstinence-only recovery and 12-step. I relapsed immediately every time. I was prosecuted for drug use and treated like a criminal, cycled in and out of jail. I am queer, second generation.

My mom, under the care of the VA, overdosed from her excessive prescription load of opioids and benzodiazepines. A few months after that I sold a gram to my friend Justin, he overdosed, and I was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his death. I was housed at FCI Dublin, a low and not a camp. Mass incarceration is a domestic human rights crisis. Nearly 40% of the population were Mexican citizens. They were (or will be) deported upon their release. One woman is serving life without parole for a drug crime, she was not granted clemency, presumably because of her Mexican citizenship. My friend Monica had her parental rights permanently revoked because she was incarcerated, she was then deported. I fell in love with a Mexican woman who was then deported. Immigration detention is truly awful they tell me. My Facebook feed is now full of people that live in Mexico. It’s not uncommon to see dead bodies or the police response to said dead bodies on the street. I have mounting student loan debt. I’ve struggled with my mental health most my life. The list goes on.

I have an emotional connection to so many things that the news exhausts me. I can’t do what the woman from The Oregonian op-ed does and block it all out because it doesn’t affect me. Sometimes it seems like I care about too many things—but I can’t not. I care about all the things that affect me or affect someone I know.

The second-to-last email I sent from prison

Thursday, January 4th, 2018

Send All: 1,275

That's how many days ago I got arrested.

I got arrested at age 24, when Barack Obama was president of the United States, when I'd never heard of ISIS, Uber, or Tinder. Today I'm 28. Gay marriage is legal in the US, weed is legal in Oregon, and Donald Trump is the president.

What does it feel like to get out of prison in a few days?

I remember when I was a kid on Christmas Eve, and I knew that in the morning I would wake up to a plethora of cool presents. If I could only fall asleep, I would wake up to all the presents. But the excitement about what I knew was coming in the morning prevented me from falling asleep. I could feel the excitement like a physical sensation. That's what it feels like to get out of prison. Except that excitement has been drawn out over a two week span, which is unsustainable, and the excitement decays into something more reminiscent of anxiety. But as the fear that they are going to take my date diminishes the excitement ratchets back up.

The daily degradations of prison are especially potent when compared with the imminence of my release. It's amazing what I've become adapted to here. I think of the elements of my daily life today compared with what they will be next week at this time, and the stark contrast is offensive. My days are less bearable because of it. This piles on to the preexisting excitement/anxiety vacillation.

How many times have I dreamed of getting released? Literally hundreds. How many times in my life will I experience such a dream-come-true scenario? This is perhaps the most exciting thing that I will ever experience.

A five-year sentence felt like forever. I could not conceive of the end. It was a distant abstract future, beyond the grasp of my mind. But here it is. And realizing this, I'm realizing all dates come. August 23rd, 2029 I will turn 40. That date will come. This is the most tangible example I've ever had about the inexorable march of time.

"Everyone I know has been so good to me." - Fly by Sugar Ray

My best life

I’m still in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I’m having some of the best days of my life. They are ordinary and beautiful. I landed a great, though brief, internship with a human rights NGO. I love my temporary apartment and my fresh cut flowers and my candles. I’m proud of the life I’ve created. This might be temporary—but now I know what I want. I’m actually pretty simple. A job that is fulfilling, music, food, a few good friends, books, and writing. That’s it. That’s all I need. I can’t wait to see what the more permanent version of my best life is going to look like.

I was interviewed by a journalist for Street Roots. I wrote the answers while I was in Uruguay and it is in this week’s issue. Even from afar I am trying to make a difference in my country for my people. I am proud to be American, but more than anything, I am GRATEFUL. Even with the domestic human rights crisis of mass incarceration, and all of our other deep problems, we have it pretty damn good.

In 5 Years Time

July 9th, 2014. At 3pm Kris woke me up with a gentle knock at the door, "Morgan, the police are here for you." The US Marshalls had found me. It hadn't taken long. I’d had warrants for 6 weeks but had been strung out for years. I spent the next four and a half years in varying forms of confinement.

July 9th, 2019. It's Argentine Independence day and I'm watching a military parade march down an avenue in their capitol city. Planes fly overhead.

Summer 2009: State-of-the art jets fly over head. I'm 19 years old and my Air Force recruiter roped me into working the Hillsboro air show. I am leaving for basic in two months.

July 9th, 2009: I'm on the way to Oregon country fair for the first time, listening to the song “5 years time” by Noah and the whale, thinking about where I'll be in 5 years. (See above.)

July 9th, 2016: it's the two year anniversary of my arrest and I'm sitting at a computer kiosk in the drug treatment unit of a federal prison, reflecting on my life.

July 9th, 2018: My case manager affixes a bulky GPS monitor to my left ankle. It's a privilege, I'm told, to have to plug myself in two hours a day like a human electronic. It means I can leave the halfway house and it's incessant pat downs and metal detectors.

July 9th, 2019: I'm walking down the street in Buenos Aires, reflecting on my life. To commemorate all the needles I pierced my skin with, I pierced my skin with yet more needles and got a new tattoo. It's a lyric that Myriah once dedicated to me, once made my mom weep.

My eyes are wide open today. I see clearly all the lives I've lived.

Life as you know it is not life itself. When life as you know it is over, it doesn't mean life itself is over. You'll create a new life, it will look nothing like the one before. You'll experience moments of despair because you can't possibly imagine what is to come. You feel like you're life is over. It is not.

International Life

I entered into Argentina yesterday for the third time. My passport is filling up with stamps. I’m surrounded by people from all over the world—there’s so much more diversity here than in the United States. Today I’ll book my flight to Brazil. This is the life I always wanted.