Locked Up: Notes from the Underground

Soundtrack:

I'm staring at the faded stripes on my jumpsuit.
I've tried the phone for the hundredth time. I've lost all sense of time and haven't seen a clock since the strip search and handing over my street clothes. 1, 2, maybe 3 hours ago.

I haven't spoken to anyone I know and I don't know if they can understand the recording of me saying my voice on the jail's collect call.
I don't know that anyone knows I'm fucking arrested and locked up.
I have a mandatory bond.
If I had a fucking smartphone I could pay the bond myself.
t's 7am on a Sunday, I know everyone's probably asleep.

I'm in a holding cell with 9 other guys. Drug, alcohol, and assault charges mixed between us.
Some due to stupidity like me, some due to clerical errors, all embroiled in the system, buried what feels like miles underground.
The lights are bright and I haven't slept nor eaten in 24 hours.
The bench/concrete is cold but the blanket helps a little bit.
I don't really sleep  but fade between what feels like closing my eyes, being far away and the jarring realization this isn't one of my dreams where I'm locked up and realize it was just a dream.....this is what this is.
There's no information, no word, no way to know if/when I'll get out, or even when I'll be moved from this holding cell.

I know that to lose control of my emotions will do nothing but exacerbate this situation.
Another guy already flipped out and was put on suicide watch simply from the holding cell and being unable to reach anyone.

I accept I'm about to lose fucking everything I've worked for throughout my 20's.
I close my eyes, pull the blanket over my head and the 10 of us all silently agree to try and sleep.

They line us up and I'm handcuffed to another guy with my same charge.
We're being transported to the larger jail downtown.
My court date is weeks away.
I don't know if/when I'll be bonded out.
I don't know if anyone even knows I've been arrested and locked up.
I don't cry and I don't even get mad. I simply feel the wordless in articulable state of shock that comes with the entire degrading, dehumanizing process of arrest and incarceration.