‘Reborn Into A Strange New World’: A Trans Woman Prepares For Release After 18 Years In Men’s Prison

This piece is a commentary, part of The Appeal’s collection of opinion and analysis.

My name is Jessica Phoenix Sylvia, and I am a trans woman who has been living in a men’s prison for the past 18 years.

After being incarcerated for nearly two decades on domestic violence charges, I am finally being released. I wish I had some wonderful “going home” story, but I don’t. I can never go home because home no longer exists.

The only world I know anymore is prison. For me, where I go after I leave here has more to do with where I won’t be than where I will.

The real world, as I remember it, is stuck in 2004. There was no Facebook, and I had a phone with a black-and-white screen. My official documents reflected my dead name, and I was living in bad faith, usually hiding my gender identity as a survival strategy even though I had come out as trans when I was 17. I am now 46.

Now it’s 2022, and I know nothing about the world outside these walls. I am an absurd time traveler from an alternative world with an incongruous history. My life skills are underdeveloped, and I have little understanding of routine activities.

My finely sharpened prison survival skills are useless in the real world. I know what to do if I am confronted by a violent person in the prison yard, yet the thought of learning to navigate Microsoft Word or Google Docs with a deadline looming makes me want to cry. Prison has disabled me. And as a trans woman who has spent so many years in a men’s prison, I have complex PTSD.

After several failed suicide attempts, I finally got the chance to access transition-related health care in 2017 and came out very publicly again that same year, vowing to live in good faith for the rest of my life as a proud trans woman. Despite having come out as a teenager, I frequently hid my gender identity as a coping strategy: I prioritized my safety over living in good faith.

Since transitioning, I have experienced a great deal of harassment and discrimination, which is why I decided to dedicate my life to speaking up and fighting back. I have been very active with the Trans in Prison Justice Project, a nonprofit working to end human rights abuses of incarcerated trans women, and other initiatives focused on a range of issues, from youth restorative justice to the intersection of incarceration and homelessness. In 2021, I led a campaign to bring awareness to the Washington State Department of Corrections’ refusal to respect trans identities, after being forced to use my dead name within the system.

I have put in a lot of work to become a better person. I like to think I have made a positive impact over the last several years.

Still, I am not sure I have the support I need. The last six months have been very difficult for me. In September 2021, I was sent to the Intensive Management Unit (IMU) for 71 days for allegations of inciting a group demonstration. While in IMU, my transition-related health care was interrupted.

The lack of necessary, gender-affirming health care has destroyed me. I feel disconnected and dissociate often. I have trouble focusing. I have not been myself, and I have trouble writing.

I also recently tested positive for COVID-19, which landed me in a medical isolation unit for two weeks. My inability to communicate with my typical support network took a heavy toll. Many of the folks who had been present in my life seem to have disappeared at my time of greatest need: just before my release.

As my release date approached, I had hoped to be connected to services that could provide me with essential resources—like food, clothing, and hygiene products—so I could be better prepared for life after prison. But instead, the system simply continued having its retributive way with me: Once it’s done chewing me up, it will spit me out.

I plan to make up for lost time with my elderly mother once I am released. She tells me about the computer desk she bought for me and how she will welcome me into her house with a room of my own. I will look out for her while I take time to rebuild my life skills and deal with the medical procedures I have scheduled. I also hope to write two books once I am released: one about name-change ceremonies for trans folks and a memoir. I intend to earn my bachelor’s degree, too.

With my release date approaching, I am excited but anxious. I wonder if my community custody officer will be understanding of my lived experience. I ask myself whether I will find the community and care I desperately need. After being surrounded by men for 18 years, I need mothering, daughtering, and sisterhood. I need to be touched by someone who loves me. I want someone to tell me that everything is going to be OK.

I remember being in the county jail as a 28-year-old and realizing that I was leaving the real world, not to return for years. I was scared and asked questions as I prepared myself for the harsh realities of prison life. Now, years later, I feel like I am doing the reverse: I am in prison, asking questions and preparing myself for life on the outside.

I know that the existence I have become familiar with is about to end, and I am about to be reborn into a strange new world. It is the one I left 18 years ago, but it is not the same world, and I am not the same person. 

I am an absurd time traveler from a strange, alternative world with an incongruous history, but here I go.