Sleep, Interrupted

I wake in the small hours, unsure of why, until I strain my ears against the night and hear the faint jingle of keys. A guard's doing his routine wing walkthrough. I'm frequently woken up this way. The cause isn't always noise, though. Sometimes a steel door will slam after I wake up, and I'll realize belatedly that the person who closed it must've aimed a flashlight through the cell window and pierced the fragile membrane of my sleep. In either case, when the interrupter exits the wing, I'm often left to lie here, at the mercy of idle thoughts.

When am I going to be able do laundry tomorrow, considering my schedule? I need to ask how this weekend's Spotlight episode is coming. Shit, and there are still three guest spots to fill for this season of Real Talk. I've got to hurry up and record those episodes! And what are we going to do with the sports slot on Channel X after next week? Mental note: load Twon's notes for the next Playlist episode onto the tablet before our taping. That flyer still needs to be made for the housing units, too. And so on, leaping from thought to thought.

It only makes sense that anxieties about looming deadlines would lay siege to my nights. They certainly preoccupy my daylight hours. Considering that I practice regular meditation, I probably struggle too much with this.

Lying flat on this dense mattress, I turn my focus to the breath. The heaviness of my chest suggests that it's filled with lead. The tension in my neck battles this lumpy pillow. A massage would be nice, I think, then let go of the idea, recognizing its unhelpfulness. Be here, now, I remind myself, and come back to the breath.

It's been a long day. I'm so tired. Sleep should come quickly, but the mattress is hot and my mind is on the move—the perfect recipe for unrest.

I'm no stranger to this. Insomnia plagued me as a teenager. Tossing on my bed for hours on end, I'd be exhausted but kept awake by a mind racing to nowhere. Doctors prescribed medication for sleep, but not even 300 milligrams of trazodone did the trick. The drugs only succeeded in making me dizzy. I'd just lie there, my head swimming, desperate for rest that wouldn't come.

Only when I started taking more control of my life did that anxiousness go away. I started asserting myself, exercising more independence, and opening my mind to the possibility of a rosier future. From major depression, I emerged into something like contentment.

Now is different. I have tools that are tremendously effective under normal conditions. My confinement is entirely to blame for these 2 o'clock wakeups. There's no way for me to prevent from being stirred out of sleep. All I can do is work to get back to that state when it happens. No prevention, only repair.

This fact, too, becomes a conscious thought that harasses me, another ten or fifteen minutes lost to unproductive thought. The sun will be up in a few hours. There's no winning here; I can only practice being a gracious loser.