"Have you ever woken up, nothing specific has happened, everything is the same as always, but in this moment the weight of it all is almost more than you can bear?

You wonder how you landed in this particular life and what happened to your dreams and your energy to achieve them? The person in the mirror is the boring old person and for a terrible moment you feel like a boring old person, which is a totally foreign sensation because you have always been high energy, spirited, dynamic, jazzy.

The people around you don't notice. Your face smiles. Even your voice says the required words in the proper tones. But deep inside there is a silence. A hole. Something has left or died or gone missing. An aching sense of loss grips your heart. It's not sadness; it's an immense void, a plunging emptiness that shadows everything.

When this happens to me, I feel like I'll never write again. That the job I love is pointless. Everything is futile. I want to sink into vegetative coma and just let life roll by. Every time it happens it feels like it's never been this bad before but a perusal of my journals shows me that it always feels this bleak; it always feels as though it will never end and I also notice that this black hole happens two or three times a year in a loose cycle of output, exhaustion, and recovery. But because of the mood, I don't believe the journals. This time, I say to myself, it is different.

As a matter of fact, this time is different because this time I cannot turn to my journals to set my mood into a proper perspective. In the last shakedown, a series of miscommunications blossomed into a fullblown fiasco. Consequently all of my journals, cassette tapes, photo album, and some books were either destroyed or mailed out. It wasn't that the items were deemed contraband but in the arguing and maneuvering and confusion, for a day, the law became all possessions (boots, coat, bathrobe, towels, college books, canteen, etc) had to fit in the two plastic bins (24x20x14), obviously it could not happen without abandoning significant possessions.

I didn't think it would bother me much. I am an expert at letting go; I have mastered loss. However a sensation of losing my anchor has surprised me. My journals were my roots, my vision, my stabilizers, and my perspective. I hadn't realized this. I had not known how important it was to have a safe place to share, unload, discuss, and ponder. I feel I have lost my refuge and best friend--my partner and mentor. I lost a significant other part of myself.

Joseph Heller would do the scene proper justice: A new memo taken on the bulletin board. A new memo stipulating the increases allowed by DOC in the number of personal possessions we may have. A new memo of significant increase posted two days after my meager (I had far less than I am technically permitted) possessions were deemed excessive property because they would not fit in my two boxes.

My brain circles in a rut that I didn't have to give up my journals (my music and photo album). I didn't have to but I did because I wanted to be obedient. I didn't want to argue over some material goods. I know people who can instantly produce moralizing tales about material goods, or conversely, on taking a stand; people who can glibly lecture about the spiritual, the higher way or who can sermonize on standing up for one's rights.

Frankly I don't have ears to hear any of them. I just want to reach a place of acceptance where I can laugh about it, because it distresses me most of all that I have temporarily misplaced my sense of humor.

In the meantime, I try to care about the life lessons presented and what I discover is that sometimes I don't want to learn anything.

Sometimes I don't even want to an adult. I want to indulge myself--sob, eat chocolate and potato chips, watch stupid TV and vent my anger. I want to be comforted. So at heart, I'm a big whiney baby.

What a relief!

Let us be wise by being real." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, May 4, 2006).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. This column is one of a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'