Lunsford - Sweet Hell on Fire

When people find out that I was a corrections officer, they always ask for my story. They want to know what its like behind the walls, working with inmates, if its really like OZ or Prison Break . Im suddenly a curious little unfamiliar bug they were surprised to find on their begonias, and they want to inspect me. It doesnt bother me, because I know the details of what we do are often kept quiet. Thats just part of the culture of The Job.

Once I start talking, they always want more. And I always have moreanyone who has ever worked in law enforcement in any capacity has a million stories of the incredible, the horrible, and the obscene. Its probably not surprising, then, that I wrote the first draft of this book almost like A Girls Guide to Prisona manual. All stories of the prison, never anything too personal. Never anything that dug into the meat of me . I knew I had to dig even deeper.

So I got out my scalpel/keyboard and flayed myself open and spilled everything all over the page. Then I realized people were going to know things about me. Things Id never told anyone else. They were going to see me at my worst, and I dont have a best to contrast it with because Im not there yet. Im still a work in progress.

Theyd see how selfish I was, how cruel. How small.

I panicked. Why in the hell would anyone want to read about that? I was a bad mother, a bad daughter, a bad wife, a bad friend. A boozed-out, tired bar slut with no dreams and no future.

But I was a good officer.

That mollified me temporarilyI could live with people not liking the person I was. Or even the person I am. Whatever.

But Id be showing everyone my soft, sticky insides. The things that hurt me, the things that made me bleed. The things that still sometimes rise up in the dark and choke me. My weakness. It twists up my guts even now, but like the old adage says, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?

Any book is a type of voyeurismyoure looking into other worlds that live in someone elses head, or youre looking into someone elses life, into their thoughts. Even a how-to book is poking around in someone elses brain.

And Id signed up to give the guided tour.

But I decided its okay for people to look at me; in fact, I want them to, because my story could show someone else who is lost in the dark, afraid, and wondering if theyll ever see the sun again that its still there. You can claw your way out because Im living proof.

Im here and living my dream. Im a full-time writer, full-time mom, and full-time wife. Things arent perfect, but theyre damn close.

After you read my story, I hope you remember this confession at the beginning, because beginnings are always so different from endings. Beginnings are universally nave. I wont say innocent, but theyre just so far removed from the place where you emerge.

In the beginning, I had no idea that this journey would change me so much, wound me so much, or even stitch me back together as it did.

Welcome to my world.

I know that people frequently use this phrase in a condescending tone, but thats not the case here. My welcome is genuine and heartfelt. But you are going to need a map.

This book chronicles a year in my life, a year when I was working as a corrections officer for a state prison. Id worked at the prison before, but now I was what they called a retread. That is, Id been dumb enough to come back for another round. The book begins near the end of the first year of my second stintright before everything started to fall apart. And the story doesnt stop at the gate outside the walls, as if that world could be shrugged off with the uniform at the end of my shift. This is an uncensored look at the job and the effects it had on the whole of my life.

I began this year as one person but emerged on the other side quite another, both from external and internal forces. They say that during the first year of corrections, an officer is no good for The Job. After that year, theyre no good for anything else. And its true: theres very little else Im suited for now. I write, but thats a solitary career. One in which I dont have to interact with people every day if I choose not to.