June 4, 2024

The humidity condenses to a wet film on the concrete floor. It is so bad that a paper processing my list of phone numbers is limp. Most of my paper products and books are in plastic bags that "cold" meals are served in. People have recently mentioned reading about my having spoken to my boys on the phone but I am so sleep deprived that feels like it could have been four months ago. My eyes never feel rested. They have gone bad to see things both near and far without corrective lenses. I have always needed glasses for clarity at a distance but now writing and reading distance is compromised. Some people would upset me to suggest it is old age when the lack of sleep weighs so heavily on how my eyes have felt every day of the last four years. Lack of sleep is as diabolical as Chinese water torture but it is much slower. Multiple people keep scheduling and cancelling or not attending video calls which does a number of things. It blocks other people form scheduling visits since I am only allowed one per day, if the video visit kiosk isn't otherwise booked full. It also gets me sent back to my cell right away so I only get two minutes out of my cell instead of twenty six. Thirdly, it invites the harassing comments by other inmates when I do the walk of shame back to my cell of yet another missed or cancelled video visit. It is happening a lot. One person did it four times in the last couple weeks which is frustrating in itself, but multiple people are doing (or not doing) the video visits they schedule and it makes me feel discarded and unimportant. Although it isn't a big deal to people out in the world, to me, it may be the only social contact I get for four or five days. Cumulative to lack of sleep and other stressors, it feels hurtful to me. It emotionally weighs against my willingness to write or call those specific individuals, but also my inclination to write or call other people. To make someone think they are only a convenient entertainment, treat them as an inconvenient disinterest.