Inside this cell

My first day

As I'm sure you have gathered from the title of my story I am in this cell.
This cell, How does one explain what living in a box feels like! At first I was scared, I lived with constant anxiety and fear of what was to happen to me at any split second. I then used the cell as a security blanket and didn't want to exit, I'd rather lay and feel sorry for myself in my depressed state. The cold concrete walls matched the concrete flooring, I could feel the cold through my paper thin soles of what they call shoes. I tried to imagine the previous tenants, the previous body that lay on my mattress and wrap themselves in my blankets. Every inch of this cell has a story, and I cant imagine any are positive.
I tend to look at it as a chance to think. People would kill to take a break from their hectic lives to just lay around wouldn't they? Pun intended.

My first day in the big house. Scared doesn't come close to what I felt. I remember throwing up in the bus the whole way there. Fair to say I didn't make any friends on the first day! We arrive outside the biggest brick building I've ever seen, surrounded by barbed wire taller than any person with a 10 foot ladder in hand could even reach. There was maybe one tree and dead grass covered the ground srrounding its trunk. It reminded me this is where your soul comes to die.
We enter a huge steel automatic gate and drive to the reception building. Cuffs on my ankles, my wrists and a chain around my waste tying it all together, we shuffled one by one into a holding cell like a literal chain, all linked and intertwined.
It was now that i was to be stripped of anything that made my identity, stripped of clothing and told to bend over, squat now cough, open your mouth, lift your tongue. If dignity were actually ever a thing you felt, I was never priviledged to have felt it, it was stripped of me in that very moment. In a shower we filed in, with 15 other naked women, all of whom are strangers to me, with cold water and a bar of antiseptic soap. If one was to have any of this so called dignity I refered to,  after this experience, it would be a penny in size.
We each then get thrown a set of pants, a shirt, a pair of socks and shoes. A toiletry kit of a toothbrush and paste, a bar of soap, a roll of toilet paper and a towel. I can assure you this was my most valuable item, the toiletry kit. Commissary pricing is worse than a gas station on the side of a freeway, overcharging must have been the highlight of many businesses that chose to stock these shelves.
We get dressed then back into a holding cell.
After hours of waiting in a concrete room with a concrete bench and one toilet, we get split up now and taken to a block that they put all new inmates into before we get put into general population, or for some protective custody.
I got put in cell 106, this comprised a bunk bed, a desk, a toilet and basin. I was delegated bottom bunk, there's one positive so far.
By this time I had nothing left, I was emotionally exhausted, I lay on my bed with a thin ratted pillow and a blanket that barely covered me. I remember back to a time when feeling exhausted meant I had been out with my friends riding our bikes around town until dusk settled. It felt like falling onto your bed after a day exploring the town, scrabbling change together to share a bottle of soft drink and a block of chocolate then getting back fast to home for a warm cooked dinner on the table. Except, there was no home, no warm cooked dinner or fun memories made, it was a cold cell, paper thin mattress and a smell that just cannot be described.
I fall asleep and wake realising I'm still here, still in this nightmare that no one can be blamed for but myself. I now need to be reminded everyday of my flaws, my mistakes, a punishment man created and said this is just. I just replay that night over and over in my head, it will never end, its that film that flickers and gets stuck on repeat. The images get paused on scenes, it almost feels like a spectator watching from the outside in. The more time passes even I have to question the legitimacy of my own thoughts.
I have always been a person of wonder, pondering thoughts to the ends of the earth. Questioning life's most greatest experiences and wanting to seek more, wanting to know everything there is. Delving into my own minds thoughts, I race thinking did I ponder too far this time? Have I been so reckless on my path of life and let this happen. I knew I had done something wrong, I can see it, I can feel it, I hear the voices and I see them staring at me in the corner of cell, everywhere I turn there they are.
I hear the guard yell, ' open 106', I am immediately drawn back to the earths ground.