Long post about correponding with a tortured soul

I've been corresponding with a young man that was a friend of mine when I was younger. I suppose you could say it was like he got adopted as another younger brother when I was in junior-high and high school. His sister was my best-friend while I was at high school and continues to be a very dear friend of mine.

He's in prison for comitting statutory rape. His parents asked me to write him about the middle of last year. He's been in prison for a few years now. I figured that his parents wouldn't be asking me to write unless they were deeply concerned for his well being and the need for more positive influences to counter-balance the effect his peers at the prison would have on him. I agreed to it, despite my husband's uncertianty.

It's been an interesting and sorrowful experience. Mainly, my letters have been encouragement to look forward to the future and strive to use the time he is there to improve himself. He has responded somewhat favorably to the general tone of mentoring and hope that I've brought to him through my letters. I've done my best to be non-judgemental, even going so far as to telling him that I didn't feel it necessary for him to tell me what happened from his perspective.

His letters to me have been almost like confessional recitations. It was uncomfortable at first. Now I've come to accept that he feels safe writing me about the minor evils that he's dealing with at the prison. Things like laughing with the crowd at people when they get injured right infront of him... while at the same time feeling deep guilt and shame for engaging in that behavior for the sake of saving face. He has written me about the fact that he's struggling with a failing health. He's scared that he has cancer. After the first biopsy back last June, I figured that it was resolved. He said that they took the entire growth out of his leg and that he was ok.

His health continues to fail him. He's been experiencing pain through out his body and he will be getting another biopsy on the other leg soon. I'm the only person aside from himself and the people helping him with this at the prison to know about this. I suspect that he is probably suffering some form of cancer, given that his mother is currently recovering from simmilar problems due to cancer and there are others in his family on the mother's side with cancer. I am faced with a moral dilemma here because he's asked me not to let his family know. Thus far I have respected his wishes. As I read his letters describing his decline in health, however, I question if I should continue to hold silent.

He writes to me about the angst of being in prison. He describes to me what it is like to be left with your thoughts, fears and memories of your life before prison. It's a rather... harrowing thing to read his letters at times. I'm stricken by the deep anguish and terror he feels for his life while he is in prison and the hopelessness he feels for his life after prison. It is very hard to present a candle of hope to this tortured man. He desires desperately to change his life and to become a decent and productive member of society. He fears his companions in incarceration. He mourns his freedom and his innocence of youth. And he laments and repents his past actions that brought him to this place in his life.

It troubles me. I strive to help him come forward on his efforts to change his life. I try to bring him some sense of his past life in my letters, keeping the tone like I would with my brother in the military. Treating it like he is doing some unplesant duty for the greater good, at times. And at other times I have a tone that is... well... it's like the letter writes itself sometimes and I'm instructing him on how to persevere in faith despite the darkness around him. He was raised Catholic and briefly considered converting to Wicca. I explained some of the responciblities that came with witchcraft, he changed his mind.

I work very hard to be compassionate and help him to reconcile the past and present. I try to help him plan for his future and make continual forward progress in improving his life. It's very challenging to me to exhort himself to be compassionate and understanding with himself. It's some times very hard for me to be compassionate towards him, as I am a rape survivor myself. When he sent me a letter a little over a month ago where he described what happened and the trial to me, I was left uncertian how to reply. I'm left at a loss here for what to say to this young man.

He describes to me a scene where the young woman claimed she was older then she was and they engaged in concentual sex. He expresses a mixture of remorse and a desire to blame the young woman. He also explained in that letter that the fiancee he had, the one that he had cheated on in a moment of lust with this young woman, was pregnant. She had lost the babies due to late term complications during the trial. He said that he gave up hope and in a fit of self-desructiveness moved through the trial doing the minimal effort required of him by his attorney.

As I sit here and I look at all of this, I am... saddened. I don't feel anger anymore. The initial anger happened when I heard that he was in trouble with the law for his actions. I wanted to go and beat him up for it. Then, when the news reached me that he went to jail for it, I said that we needed to let the law handle it. I thought little more of it until his parents spoke to me about writing him. Until recently, I've strived not to think about how I feel about this whole mess.

I feel conflicted. On one hand, I am moved almost to tears by the troubling situation that this young man is in. My heart says to me that this guy is like my little brother and he shouldn't be in this kind of pain. At the same time, it says that he has done vile things and needs to have the tendiancy to do so purged from him. I haven't written him in 2 months. I don't know what to say.

His last letter shows him spirling downward in depression again. He's beginning to get to a point where he's thinking about harming himself. I'm not sure what to do here. Do I write him and try to help him keep his broken soul out of the mess that surrounds him? Do I stop writing him and hide from the misery he is in and the conflict that this mess brings to me? Do I write him and frankly discuss how all of this is affecting me?

I don't know. But I know that I need to make a decision today. I'm leaning towards writing him, I feel guilty for failing to write as I promiced. I just don't know how to write that letter.