Dear Mother Directional,

I wanted to come clean with you. Here and now. I want to share more about where I am and why. Not to mention the reasons behind where I am; but more, I wanted to send you this to explain what it was like from day one, up until now, and into the foreseeable future, I want to tell you more about what I see when I hopefully go forward.
They say that we have nothing but time here. Yet again, time is only slipping away. There is us, the people inside of these walls, and then there’s the rest of the world or the so-called “normal” people – then there’s life, which seems to go on.
But for us, the patients or inmates or whatever you want to call us, there is only time or the waste thereof. There’s only the slow-moving time that we spend within this small place.

Dear Mother Directional,

When there’s science, then there’s a reason to understand why things happen – or why they don’t. When there’s science, there is an understanding of how things work.
For example, we know about the trees. We know about the land and the sea. We know about the winds and the rain. And we know about things like, say, the greenhouse effect, which is something I learned about in ninth grade Earth Science.
When there’s science, we can understand more about the brain. We can understand more about our pathology and understand why we react – or should I say, maybe this explains why we overreact? Maybe this explains why we jump to conclusions.

Dear Mother Directional,

When there’s no more reasons to argue or defend yourself, then there’s no more reasons to fight or find out what’s wrong with the world.
Or, when the time comes and the need to justify yourself or explain who you are comes to an end, now we can talk about being free. 
This is when there are no more numbers between us – there’s no more ties to our status and it’s safe to just “be” without having to grab on to a label or find a definition of who we are. 

Dear Father Correctional,

I know it has been a long time since my last letter to you. It’s hard to send these sometimes because the universe is wide and vast and I, myself, am not sure whether I believe in the afterlife or not. I suppose these letters are simply built on intention. Or more to the point, I suppose these messages are written with the intent of letting go of what was and recreating the things I wished would be.

Dear Mother Directional,

I was thinking about an unintentional road trip that I took a while back. I say this was unintentional because there was no pre-set intention or direction. I had no place to go or an idea of anywhere I wanted to see. Then again, I suppose none of that mattered.
No, I just sat in the car and allowed myself to drive in whichever direction the car would take me. I had no plans as to how long this drive would be or if I would be back by a certain time. Sometimes drives like this are the best drives of all. Sometimes you just need to unplug yourself.

Dear Mother Directional,

There are so many times when the world tries to teach us something. Dare I say it, there are even more times when the world tries to warn us about ourselves. There are signs we see which we ignore. There are times when people come along and tell us, “Hey, you better watch out” and, of course, we ignore them. There are times when it seems like we are locked in this roller coaster called “life” and there’s nothing we can do until the ride stops or comes to some kind of brief intermission.
I tell you that if there is a devil, he does his best work not by tempting us to do something – but instead, the devil pulls his trick by telling people to stay away. If he is real, I would say that he does this because he knows that curiosity kills us. He knows that the warning builds our interest and this is true. It works. So, if there is a devil, he certainly knows the angles on how to pull off a really good trick.

Dear Mother Directional,

I was thinking about the ending of summer and the transfer between the warmth and the cooler months, like say, the way September rolls in and the heat breaks. Then it’s October. And then November. I was thinking about the holiday months and how they are both happy and sad and both times of great memory and times of big regrets. But that’s the thing about the future; and that’s the thing about introspection – this is hindsight because, of course, at the time of our youth, we lacked the ability to have foresight.

Dear Son, 

This message came for you the other day from Cousin Contagious. I am keeping a copy of this and I am placing this in the collection of letters which you have asked me to hold.
I hope this letter finds you at a good time and shows you that there’s more appreciation for you than you think. 
We all have tough times and, son, we all live through dark moments. I hope that you can see this now and I hope that you read between the lines here.

Love always,
Mother Directional