Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 1/15/03: 2:06 a.m. Jerked awake in a strange bed in a strange city, disoriented in a dark room with bay windows and a tall ceiling.

Jacob Lawrence, "Depression" (1950) — Jacob Lawrence, *Depression* (1950)

January 15, 2003:

2:06 a.m. Jerked awake in a strange bed in a strange city, disoriented in a dark room with bay windows and a tall ceiling. Then consciousness floods in, and you think, "O God..."

Tears fall until your head pounds from dehydration. Sitting upright in bed, folded forward, holding your knees, thinking "Why? Why? Why?"

At daylight you calm into a fitful hour's sleep before work. But never before the light arrives.

Every night for two years.