Sweat Dreams

by abaffledlook

They served ravioli again with green beans and white bread at the drop-in center where I run an art workshop. The meals there are nutritionally complete and the ravioli smelled enticing. It was so slow that day that I didn’t see anyone on the shower sign in sheet when I signed in. Maybe I looked at the wrong list because usually the list is full. Maybe most of the homeless members needed sleep that day more than a shower.
Dee, a woman who came to the drop-in center when I worked there 7 years ago, greeted me warmly. Dee has long grey hair that almost reaches her buttocks. I wondered if she had a hair brush because it looked tangled.
“Jody. You were manager here a long time ago. What happened to you?”
I was surprised she remembered my name.
“I left to go back to school,” I told her.
“College?”
“Graduate school.”
“What’d you major in?”
“Social work, but I left half-way through. It was just too much for me so I dropped out.”
“I went out west while you were gone. Orlando is the best place to be if you’re on the street. My husband and I used to sleep at a 24 hour MacDonald’s over on John Young [Parkway] but it’s better to sleep here. I get about five hours. While we were out west we were in a shelter with a bunch of sick people and my husband got pneumonia. He already has COPD. So we came back after he got out of the hospital.”
“At least it’s warm in Florida,” I said
“Yeah, but Orlando is better than Tampa because of this place. They don’t have a place like here. I sleep here during the day and drink coffee at night at MacDonald’s. Coffee’s cheap there. Not like Denny’s.”
“I know,” I said, “I usually order water when I go there.”
“Yeah. It’s like 2 bucks. That’s too much.” She wondered off towards the pool table. I wondered why she wasn’t sleeping. I wanted to ask her where her husband was, but I was afraid to. Something bad might have happened to him and I didn’t want to upset her. She only had a small black purse with her. I surmised her husband was still with her and was sleeping with their possessions in the TV room, where a lot of the homeless members crash. The TV room is cool and dark and the whole room has couches to sleep on while the TV drones at a low volume. But other members go in and out of the TV room to use the bathroom because the other bathroom has a shower that many members use to attend to personal hygiene.
Most people need about 8 or 9 hours of sleep a night. Sleeping only 5 hours a day, during the day while your circadian rhythm is telling you to stay awake must take a terrible toll on Dee and her husband’s mental and physical health. I have bipolar disorder and if I get less than 5 hours of sleep at night three nights in a row I become manic and when I become manic I lose even more sleep and end up getting sleep deprivation psychosis. I have a house and I get to sleep at night, not during the day like Dee and the other homeless people at the drop-in center who sleep in the TV room after they eat. It makes their mental health and behavioral problems much, much worse. They’re not sleeping at night outside, in shelters or in assisted living facilities because it’s too dangerous and it’s noisy. Section 8 housing has a long waiting list.
I found a YouTube video detailing the lack of sleep among the homeless. Even homeless people who don’t have a mental illness experience grave physical and mental consequences from lack of sufficient sleep. They may experience sleep deprivation psychosis. The homeless people in this video also stated they on average get only five hours of sleep and sleep during the day because it’s too dangerous to sleep at night.
According to a House the Homeless article interrogators of war captives’ use sleep deprivation as a form of torture. Rats deprived of sleep end up dying much sooner than rats that get sleep. Many studies have confirmed that the homeless – especially homeless mentally ill people – have a much lower life span.
A letter by a former homeless person to the editor to the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative details why homeless people hate shelters and would rather live on the street. Many members of the drop-in center have told me the same thing over the years. It’s noisy and dangerous.
Dee is absolutely right; the drop-in center is a safe haven even if members can only get about 5 hours of sleep. At least they can rest without having to be hypervigilant about being arrested, robbed or assaulted.