On and off, I was in prison for over 20 years.
I knew how to live in prison but we weren’t taught how to survive on the outside. That’s what I struggled with most.
Institutionalisation has impacted my perspective on life but also my daily habits.
Every morning I’d make my bed and fold my clothes. I used to stand at my bedroom door, waiting for a guard to open it. It’d take a second before I remembered I could do it myself.
I feel comfortable falling back into rigid routines and moved into a smaller room in my house because it feels more familiar. It helps me sleep better. Even when going for a walk, I find myself gravitating towards the lines on the street, like they’re the same yellow lines they have all over prison.
When you first go to prison, you count down the days on the calendar until you’re out. Once you’ve served enough time you don’t count. It only serves as a reminder that you’re stuck. You know, you don't want to look at pages and pages. You just put it away.
We weren’t taught how to survive on the outside.
I still haven't got a calendar on my wall. When they introduced watches to the canteen in the 90s my mate asked why I wouldn’t buy one. I said “What would I want a watch for, I’m doing time, do you want me to look at it every second?” I still don’t own a watch all these years later.
Growing up next to prison
I grew up in a working-class suburb of Tasmania, just a stone’s throw away from the prison where I spent most of my adult years.
The street I grew up in was great. There were eight other boys around the same age and we had many adventures and often got into quite a bit of mischief.
I used to stand at my bedroom door, waiting for a guard to open it.
My childhood was turbulent. I was nine when my father passed away. I had three sisters and a lovely mother who ended up in an abusive relationship for several years. I found this a very painful and difficult time but my mum did the very best she could working as a barmaid.
For the most part, we were happy but you could say I was on shaky ground before my first prison sentence. I was always the troublesome one who caused a great deal of hurt for my immediate family yet I knew I was always loved. Never really understood, but loved.
My life in institutions started when I was 10. I was made a ward of the state because I was a difficult child. I was moved to the young offenders’ institutions and eventually the prison I had grown up across the road from.
At the time, my criminal behaviour wasn’t about the money or growing up in a dysfunctional home but more about the sense of adventure and the thrill of the crime itself.
With crime I had money. But I also had friends and the sense of belonging I always yearned for. Crime became the centre of the next 27 years of my life. For as long as I can remember, I was either a ward of the state or a prisoner.
Finding my voice
Early in my first adult prison sentence, I became quite argumentative with authorities and was constantly in trouble. My fellow inmates suggested I join the jail’s “Spartan Debating Club”. It was there I found not only my voice, but the knowledge and strength I lacked as a youngster.
Everything became a debate. I spoke up for the basic human rights and treatment of prisoners, something particularly in Risdon. I became the yard advocate for prisoners where I debated and fought for prisoners' rights.
Tony joined a debating club in prison.
It was through this process I started to change and become a new person. Before prison and before the debating club I was Tony. When I found my voice, I became Ted. Where once I was silent, and unspoken and relatively timid, Ted was a hell of a lot stronger of a person.
Looking up at the stars
In 2011, I would leave prison for the last time. I got a job on a fishing boat, Mures Diana. I found the isolation of the boat was very much like the isolation of prison, I had everything I wanted. Everything I missed was now within my reach.
I fell in love with the boat and the ocean. I was caught between two blues, the sky and the ocean and everything in between was whatever I wanted it to be.
You don’t look up in prison, you’d only see bars. But it was while I was working on that fishing boat that for the first time in many years, I looked up at the early morning stars and got to see and appreciate my freedom for the very first time.
When I got back to land, reality would punch me in the face!
Why I still feel like a 'prisoner'
In my mind, I was always going to be a criminal. My freedom was only ever momentary and I never really thought of a life beyond that.
While I have never liked prison, I always knew and understood it was almost always the consequence of being caught. I grew to both accept it and adjust to it whenever it was necessary.
Never once did I call it ‘home’ but for much of my life it was.
I realise that now as a 58-year-old I am still, in so many ways, a prisoner. I’ve just made my home a cell.
While you may have your sense of ‘normal’ I still don’t know how to find my own. I’m still comparing myself to others and their life situations. I’m looking to others to find out how they found a sense of happiness, normality, comfort, solitude and peace of mind.
