Court house

Walking into the courthouse in 2025 took me way back, way back to a time when my name echoed in these halls too often, when court dates were as routine as paydays, and I was always waiting on a verdict that never truly freed me. I could still feel the weight of those years pressing against my chest like a judge’s gavel slamming down on a fate I couldn’t control.

Outside, the familiar sight of hurried last drags on cigarettes painted the same picture of desperation I once knew too well. The nicotine-filled exhales mixed with the cold morning air, swirling like the uncertainty in the eyes of the people waiting to step inside. Some of them laughed, not because life was funny, but because pain sometimes only has two options—tears or laughter. Others sat still, haunted by the unknown, their hands fidgeting with paper summonses or last-minute phone calls to people who couldn’t save them from what was coming.

Stepping inside was like stepping into a time capsule. The same metal detectors, the same empty-your-pockets routine, the same worn-out carpets that had soaked up too many broken stories. The air carried a scent you could never quite wash off—a blend of cheap cologne, yesterday’s mistakes, and the stale breath of regret. You don’t need to hear a single case to know the courthouse is built on misery.

But this time, my name wasn’t on the docket. My freedom wasn’t hanging in the balance. This time, I wasn’t here for something I had done—I was here for something I needed to do. Yet the walls still whispered my past, reminding me of the young man who used to sit on those hard wooden benches, counting the seconds before the judge determined his next steps. The courthouse doesn’t care who you were before you walked in, and it doesn’t care who you’ll be when you walk out. It just processes souls like paperwork, stamping people into categories they may never escape.

I look at the clerks, the officers, the lawyers with their overstuffed briefcases, and I wonder—how do they do this every day? How do they navigate a space where people’s worst days are just another Tuesday on the calendar? Do they ever hear the echoes, or has the suffering just become white noise?

The courthouse isn’t a place of justice. It’s a place of consequence. It doesn’t make people whole; it just decides how much more they’ll break before they leave. And as I walked out, breathing in the fresh air of my present, I realized the only difference between the man I was and the man I am today is that I finally learned to stop waiting on a verdict.

Because I decided my own.