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It has been great to hear from you and it has afforded me this moment to spend with you away from what is trying to consume me alive. Basically, nothing has really changed. I am battling my condition alone and in fear yet I continue with a force and determination for life. I want to live.

[My] medication was decreased [and another medication] was increased…I feel as if I’m back at square one, trying not to act on my thoughts…[I hear] whispers coming from others plotting to do me harm, though these could very well be created by me—it truly does affect me in a lot of ways.

Try and understand it’s as if I am in a very dangerous war of my own and though I think of those who are in a worse situation than I [who have] lost all sense of reality, the effects of my condition are horrific to say the least. Yet it is a realization like this that helps me to continue in the struggle to become and remain a normal person with a mind in peace and a heart bursting with love and concern to share.

Believe me, my situation makes my condition even worse and knowing this, I do all I can to act normal. Unless I hurt myself physically or start acting indiscriminately upon my thoughts, I, like so many others, will not be taken seriously and treated for my condition.

The other day a friend told me that I am like a time bomb and with this running through my mind constantly. I am doing everything I can on my own to stay in touch with reality and facts. I do want to be released. I know I need help, especially now. I don’t want to hurt myself or someone else. I want to be normal and to have a normal, law-abiding life.

I am being held in my cell for a minimum of 23 hours per day and that’s if I request to go to the yard for an hour of recreation, which I never do because I was involved in a physical altercation with another prisoner. I am hoping that when the rule violations I am charged with are reviewed and I explain my part of the story I will be only reprimanded and released from “keep locked” status, so that I can spend more time doing my assigned program [as a] porter [in order to work hard and get] too exhausted to act upon some of my thoughts while trying to relax.

These are very difficult and trying times for me. I do read your precious letters and the paper over and over, reminding myself of what at times I seem to want to forget: that my condition is not an isolated one and that my situation can improve—it has to.