Letty Argueta
Aug 27, 2017 · 4 min read

My Sentenced

Twelve years ago I got sentenced to 25-years at the state penitentiary in California. I still remember that first day I walked into that building. I was in my twenties. I was young and full of energy. I was also naive and scare, but


I had been sentenced and their was nothing I could do……I just had to do my time……my 25 year sentenced.


At times, doing time was fun. I met a lot of people. People with different belief systems, those were the best conversations I would ever have with another person. Other times my day would just drag, it was super boring and I literally felt that my brain had stopped working because I would sit by myself, with no one to talk to. And then we had those days were everyone knew that:


We were about to go into the war zone, and we were going to see fights, injuries and chemical weapons being deployed to stop the riots…. And In a weird sick way I miss those days.


Prison to me has been like a school, but not a regular school but a private / mental research school were everyone is always doing some type of experimental procedure on someone either mentally or physically. I learned to always have my back against a wall. I learned not to trust anyone…. Not even myself. I learned to read eyes, to read facial expressions, and I learned how to talk in codes and I learned that famous gangster sign language. But in a weird way I learned to always talk with the truth. To talk loud and clear. I learned to keep it real. I learned that my physical body and my strength is not important but how I can keep my composure in moments of stress. I learned to fight. I learned to defend myself. I learned to trust my guts and my instincts. I learned to play dominos and spades and to sing or should I say free style rap. I learned to tell jokes. I learned to be a joke myself, i did all that just to survived. I learned to pray. Ooh yes I learned to pray inside those walls. I had numerous talks with my God, for at times I felt that I was going to be the next one to be assaulted.


But I have just been informed that I will get an early release date


I’m going back home. I’m going back home to my parents, my siblings and friends and I’m so scare. I’m scare because half of my youth has been left here or should I say I have been raised inside these walls and this is my security blanket. I mean…..


I leave friends in here. Friends who helped me celebrate my birthdays,holidays,and who saw me fight my battles and who saw me become “a boss, the boss, the shot caller, the ring leader, the O.G a mentor.


Do I want to leave prison, YES!!!! I do. I want to reclaim my life again. I want to be that young naive girl that I was before I came to prison. I feel that I have witness to many evil things and I was forced to grow up real quick. I want to leave, yet I cannot. In a sick disturbing way I have fallen in LOVE for these plain cement walls. These walls are calling me to stay. The walls that were once dirty and ugly have become the walls that I admire just like a beautiful painting in a museum.

I tell myself that I need to snap out of this emotional roller coaster and remembered how I would pray to God that I wanted time to just come, to hurry up I wanted to be 50years old for that was the age I was going to be when I was released from prison. But like I said


I’m being released in 2 weeks and for the first time ever I want and I need the universe to stop for a brief moment… I need to acknowledge certain things


I need to acknowledge the people who raised me in here. I need time to preach and to raise the people whom I’m leaving behind. I need to show them the survival skills, I need to leave a manual. I need time to write a goodbye speech. I just need a little longer to remain inside these walls until I pick up the years that I left behind. I need that time that just won’t come back.

But, the moment has arrived, and I think about the first words that were told to me by that prisoner that was a serial killer, he said “you don’t belong here…. Get out” and I am getting out but what did he see in me that I haven’t seen in these 12 years that I have been locked up. Who am I? Who have I become?

My prisoner friend told me to go out there and enjoy life…. But how do I do that? For when I was incarcerated all I worried about was to be alive each day and now I’m forced by society to worry about other things .

So my sentence has been done…. So did I learn anything???? Ooh yeah I almost forgot


I survived

I survived the depths of hell, and I completed my sentence.

Now I just wait ……..

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