Of Jailbirds

Since 2005 I have known five people who have done time in prison. While in jail they’ve asked me to hold them down via letters and phone calls. I am nice person so I write letters back and sometimes take the occasional phone call. However, I have progressively become more and more annoyed. For one thing, these people were not best friends with me before they got locked up but once they got locked up the letters have flown in and the phone calls (from a couple of them) have certainly been more than adequate.

To put this in perspective (and so that you will not think that I am either a complete sucker for maintaining contact or an utter asshole for my ranting), I shall name the folks and my association with them.
1) My younger half brother, C: He got locked up in 2000 and had to do a five year bid. I wrote him for five years! I have the letters to prove it. He got out last March and I have seen and spoken to him less than 5 times. Oh, he got locked up again last month. I refuse to write him.
2) My homeboy E: He is the older brother of one of my childhood friends and I had a crush on him when I was a tweenager because he reminded me of Snoop Dog. Since I was younger than him he never paid me any real attention. Once we got older we went out a couple times but nothing major. He was too busy in the streets to think about having any relationship with a good girl such as myself. However, once he got locked up I started to receive all of these letters of devotion. He wrote that he used to like me and wants to be with me now. I am thinking “now? Yeah, right”. At first I wrote him a lot to hold him down but I don’t really press myself to do so anymore.
3) This cat named, J: He is cool but mostly a friend of my sister. He liked her a bit in college but nothing too serious. We had mutual friends and used to hang out once in a while. When he got locked up he started writing me too. I felt he got a dirty charge so I hold him down. He is a political prisoner to me. Anyway, come to find out, he had become interested in my sister because his girl left him. So, he wrote and called (pre-paid) me to basically figure out how to get at her. Once I realized his motives I stopped writing him as often. Once she found out his intentions towards her and told him it wasn’t jumping off, he stopped calling me all together.
4) My boy C: He got locked up almost a year ago. He just disappeared and no one knew what happened to him for a couple of months. Then one night he called me and I started holding him down. We went to high school together and he is my peoples but we never really talked on the phone much. We used to kick it with a few friends every now and then. But now he is writing me and calling me (with a cell phone! Don’t ask me how he got it) often. It is awkward because I am not used to talking to him more than once every couple of months.
5) My other younger half brother H: He was locked up and when he was in there he talked a good game of building a relationship. He got out in July and I have only seen him once (I think I saw him). Anyway…

All that to say: I am tired of holding down people in jail. And I am tired of men in jail falling in love out of the blue with people they didn’t love before they got locked up. I try to be a good and loving person by holding folks down with letters and phone calls but really I am not feeling it anymore. As a black woman who grew up in an urban environment I have been conditioned to hold people down when times get hard for them but really I am not feeling it anymore. My sister feels the same way.

I am making a new rule: If in the unfortunate state of affairs one gets locked up, continue communications on the same level that existed prior to the incarceration. Do not increase or decrease communications. As in all relationships consistency is the name of the game.