The monster I had been groomed to become when violence hadn't come as easily to me as it had to Ryan, Mark, and especially Shane.
It was something that had become a part of me, something I used to help keep control over the family business, something that was an asset more than a flaw.
So as long as I was that man, the Eli Mallick I had been raised to be, so long as I was him, yeah, I could never hope to see an end to the rage-outs.
I would live the rest of my life worried I might flip again, get sent back to jail. Maybe kill someone and never get out.
That could very well be my fate.
So, alone in that cell, starved for fresh air, light, or any human contact, knowing this was no life for me, I made the decision.
I couldn't be that man anymore.
I couldn't live that life.
I couldn't - fucking forgive me - be a part of my family.
For my own good.
But for theirs as well.
See, I might not have been acknowledging them at the police station or my trial, but that didn't mean I wasn't aware. When my mother broke down. Hardass, take-no-shit, balls-to-the-wall Helen goddamn Mallick broke down. Fee and Lea had lost it too. My brothers, though they weren't exactly criers, you could feel the devastation even from across a crowded room.
And while they weren't there because it was no place for them, my fucking nieces...
I just took something from them. I took a person they loved from them, someone they trusted and depended on. I ripped that away from them. I took a little piece of the blissful oblivion of childhood from their perfect little hands.
By the time I was out, they wouldn't even remember me.
They wouldn't know me.
I would be some strange guy, not Uncle Eli.
I had done that. I had made my mother and sisters-in-law cry. I had crushed my brothers. I had let down my nieces.
I could never be that person again.
By the time I got out of SHU, the decisions had been made.
I would be cutting off contact.
It would make it easier on all involved. They could move the fuck on. Not have my memory hanging like a ghost in corners for six years, not having to be a spirit kept alive. They didn't deserve that. They deserved to be happy. They deserved to have Thanksgiving and Christmas without thinking Poor Eli, all alone at Christmas in prison.
I was giving them back their freedom.
They wouldn't see it as that at first. They would think I was punishing myself, I was adjusting, I was in a bad headspace. But, eventually, after a year or two, they could move on. They would have to. That was how life went.
It. Moved. On.
As for me, I was giving myself a chance.
If I never wanted the rage to win again, I needed to stay away from anything that triggered it.
Like the family business.
Like anyone at all who might mean them harm.
Like every single other inmate in prison.
The assault stunt that got me into SHU and got some extra time on my sentence, it had been enough to keep people from fucking with me. Even when I got out fifteen pounds thinner, pale, with sleep deprivation bruises, and shoulders that had the weight of the world on them.
No one fucked with me again.
Eventually, I just became invisible.
"Damn, man, your family fills your commissary every fucking week, huh?"
I used it for essentials at first, figuring it was a necessary evil, knowing the money came from one of my legit businesses. I stocked up on some extra toothpaste, deodorant, fucking toilet paper.
But then my focus switched as I passed an old man - a lifer, in for killing the man who had fucked his wife... with an electric meat slicer - painting in his cell.
I hadn't been aware that items like that could be gotten through commissary. When I went to check, sure enough, right there under domino or chess sets, there was a list of art supplies that could be gotten. Sketch books, canvas, watercolor paint, colored pencils, crayons, markers, and graphite.
So I stopped buying shit like shaving cream and detergent.
And I bought as many art supplies as I could with my money each week.
Spend your time well, an old man had told me when I got out of the SHU. I figured he meant that I should take college courses, get a prison job, and stay out of trouble. Maybe that was what he meant. But I didn't have any interest in the college courses offered. My job only kept me busy in the laundry a few hours a day. And thanks to becoming invisible and having some affable enough ex-junkie and ex-heroin dealer as a cellmate, I didn't have to worry about the third thing.