i can’t sleep

i can't sleep. one room over someone is crying with those gut-wrenching, bone shuddering, deep body sobs that exhaust your whole body. i've never given birth or been kicked in the balls, but it's like that, only in those moments you have no hope of it ever ending. here in the psych unit i can feel trickling in (with the light under the doors that they open every fifteen minutes to check on us) the understanding. deep and sad, of those bone-shuddering sobs. i cried a little before i brushed my teeth. i'm better now, but still awake after four hours, a meditation, melatonin, and adderax, awake with my racing thoughts and those sobs. i pull my stuffed animal sloth over. allow myself to feel the sadness of empathy and a little bitter relief that it's not me. because it was monday and it probably will be again, but right now it's not. and though all i can think about it getting high and worrying if all my friendships will survive this at least i'm not in that full-body misery of being loathsome, unrecognizable, and out of control of my own self.

—November 2021, Stanford Hospital, CA