A Catholic Testimony on Prison, Truth, and What Changed Me

I remember sitting on the bunk staring at the wall, and for once I wasn’t trying to distract myself.

No pacing. No laying down and getting back up. No trying to sleep it off.

Just sitting there.

I had run out of ways to avoid what was in front of me.

If you looked at my life from the outside at that point, there wasn’t much to defend.

Gang involvement. Violence. Drugs. A long pattern of decisions that kept going in the same direction.

And eventually it led somewhere you can’t undo.

A man lost his life because of it.

If someone only knew me from that, what would they say?

They’d say I didn’t care.

They’d say I was reckless.

They’d say I destroyed more than just my own life.

And they wouldn’t be wrong.

That’s what I had to sit with.

Not a version of it.

Not a story.

The reality of it.

Before all of that, none of it felt like it was leading anywhere.

Growing up, there were drugs around, people coming and going, no real structure. Nobody really stepping in to slow anything down.

You don’t question it when you’re in it.

You don’t sit there thinking about where it leads.

You just adjust.

After a while, that becomes how you live.

I was around it, under the influence too, and it didn’t feel serious at the time.

It just felt normal.

And when that’s normal, you don’t see direction.

You just keep moving.

That carried into everything.

Gangs. Violence. Decisions that didn’t feel like decisions, just reactions in the moment.

And all of that builds.

Until it lands somewhere real.

When I got locked up, everything slowed down.

At first, you try to stay busy. Walk around. Sit. Lay down. Get back up.

You look for anything to pass the time.

But eventually that runs out.

And then it’s just you.

And your mind doesn’t stop.

I kept going back over everything.

Not just what happened.

Everything before it.

The decisions that didn’t feel serious.

The things I ignored.

The moments I knew weren’t right and kept going anyway.

It didn’t come all at once.

It kept coming back.

The same thoughts.

The same scenes.

There was a point where I didn’t want to keep going anymore.

I remember sitting there thinking, there’s nothing past this.

There’s no fixing what’s already been done.

It wasn’t loud.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It was quiet.

Just sitting there knowing I had crossed a line I couldn’t uncross.

I got off the bunk and dropped to my knees.

I didn’t care who saw.

I didn’t care what it looked like.

And I said:

If I have to do life in here… use me.

That wasn’t planned.

That wasn’t something I thought through.

That was just where I was.

And that’s where something started.

Things didn’t suddenly get easier after that.

They got clearer.

I started seeing things I didn’t want to see.

Not just the situation.

People.

What I did.

What it caused.

I remember trying to sit still and I couldn’t.

I’d sit down, get back up, sit again.

My mind kept going back to the same things.

It wasn’t just thoughts.

It felt physical.

I couldn’t settle.

I couldn’t get away from it.

I remember crying and not being able to stop.

And even that didn’t feel like relief.

There was nowhere to go from it.

I already knew about God before that.

My grandmother was Catholic. I was baptized.

But I wasn’t raised in it.

As I got older, I went through different Christian denominations.

Different churches. Different approaches.

But nothing stayed.

And I didn’t think much about that at the time.

In that cell, I started to.

Because what I needed wasn’t something that changed depending on how I felt.

I needed something that held.

I picked up the Rosary.

I didn’t pray it well.

I’d stop halfway, lose focus, start again later.

At one point I didn’t even have one.

So we made one out of a trash bag.

Just knots.

That was enough.

And I kept coming back to it.

Same prayers.

Same structure.

That didn’t move.

And in a place where everything else in my life had been inconsistent, that mattered.

Over time, something started to change.

I could sit longer.

I didn’t react to every thought the same way.

I wasn’t trying to escape it the same way.

It built.

I had heard about Christ my whole life.

Heard about the cross.

Heard about forgiveness.

But sitting there, facing what I had done, I kept thinking:

That doesn’t apply to me.

Not after this.

And that thought stayed there.

In the Catholic faith, you don’t stay vague.

You examine your life.

You bring it into the light.

You don’t hide it.

That part made sense.

Accepting mercy didn’t.

Scripture says the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin.

I knew that.

But knowing it and accepting it are different.

Because part of me still saw myself the way anyone else would.

Based on the worst thing I had done.

It didn’t erase what happened.

It didn’t remove the consequences.

But it meant I wasn’t outside of God’s mercy.

And that took time.

Even after that, I struggled.

I knew God forgave me.

But I couldn’t forgive myself.

That didn’t go away right away.

It’s been about six years since I got out.

That moment in the cell didn’t stay there.

It carried into how I live now.

The difference isn’t that I figured life out.

It’s that I stay close to what held me when I had nothing left.

In the Catholic faith, that means the sacraments.

Confession.

Being honest about where I’m actually at, not where I want to appear to be.

Saying things out loud instead of keeping them buried.

The Eucharist.

Receiving something I didn’t earn.

Being reminded that grace isn’t something I create, it’s something I receive.

The Rosary.

Going back to the same prayers, the same structure, whether I feel focused or not.

That’s what holds.

Because I already know where I go left to myself.

I’ve seen it.

So this isn’t about trying harder. It’s about staying close.

I’ve spent time speaking.

Sharing this with others.

Not because I have everything figured out.

But because I know what it looks like to be where I was.

I’ve worked with men.

Been involved in ministry.

Trying to reach people who are in the same patterns I was in.

I’ve built a life.

A home.

A family that needed healing.

None of that erases the past.

But it shows something different is possible.

And it all goes back to that moment.

Not everything changing.

But something real starting.

What matters now is how I live.

What I stay consistent in.

What I don’t go back to.

Faith isn’t something I talk about.

It’s something I live daily.