Insomnia

I didn’t sleep well last night, woke up at 2 am and couldn’t get back to slumber.  This is not unusual.  Over the past eighteen months, I’ve probably slept straight through the night a couple dozen times.  The reasons?  No bed in prison is comfortable, no matter how many blankets or pillows you can finagle.  The best you can hope for is to get to where it’s not immediately uncomfortable.  Then there’s the light in your eyes, which is worse on my top bunk.  You roll over trying to get comfortable and the light catches your eye.  Then there’s all the noise from guys shuffling to the bathroom ten times a night or the fella who chooses to work out in the hallway at 2, 3 in the morning or the guard who whistles and rattles his keys and shines a flashlight in your eyes for late night bed check.  Finally, you’re in prison and you never really relax.  Your mind is racing and you can’t get settled down.  Having “one of those days” is greatly magnified behind bars.  And then, oh yeah, the snoring!  Oh man, the snoring!

I never really appreciated snoring until last night.  If the 170 men in our dorm are representative of society in general, then snoring must be an American epidemic.  From my bunk I can hear one or two snorers, just your typical rattle in the throat, nothing major.  But last night I decided to get up and do some walking meditation when I couldn’t sleep.  Just trying to clear my mind strolling around the unit.  I was paying attention to my surroundings, wishing I could hear rain on the roof, crickets, the soft breathing of my wife or kids.  Instead, a serenade of snores.  I ended up counting 40 of the 66 cubes occupied by a snorer.  Is this normal?  Does prison encourage snoring?  I have no idea and didn’t put much thought into it.  Just listening to the concert, with instruments that sounded like freight trains, penny whistles, snuffling pigs, punctuated by sudden gasps of apnea, and eventually it seemed that all the snoring had a rhythm.  As I walked, the noises would blend together, fading away then growing stronger.  At some points the cacophony was assaultive.  At others only a few light snorers were heard.  Alas, like prison in general, never anywhere silence.

It’s hard to put into words the feeling that overcame me on this walk.  Standing in the shadowy hallway, I was struck by the absurdity of our situation:  170 grown men crammed together in a cubicle farm totaling 7500 square feet, forced into an uncomfortable level of intimacy, learning to tolerate most, like some, and genuinely become friends with a handful.  I was feeling philosophical.  Thoughts and feelings coalescing inside me.  Felt I was close to coming up with something profound.  Almost had it, and wham!  Suddenly it sounded like a runaway Mac truck on the other side of the wall, a real contender for the most terrifying snore ever!  Like a beast from hell bearing down on you.  It shattered the moment.  I laughed.  What else could I do?  (Sorry for leading you to think I might have something amazing to tell you, but this is what really happened.)

I went back to my bunk, no more ready for sleep than before my walkabout.  This time I plugged in some earplugs and climbed into bed, having learned what?  Not much to be honest.  One thing is clear, though, the reason allergy tablets are such a hot commodity in here.  Guys take them like sleeping pills to dampen their snoring.  Maybe tomorrow night my vision quest will resume, who knows?  I don’t know what will happen, but as I always say, “You can’t make this stuff up!”