The Anxiety of a Short-Timer

By Daryl “Gunner” Thompson

For me, after navigating those labyrinthine corridors for an extended period, the final months before my discharge brought on a unique and profoundly debilitating phenomenon known as Short-timer Syndrome. I never thought I’d have a short-timer tag. Not me! But this isn't the fleeting worry of a forgotten deadline or an overdue bill; it's a primal, all-consuming anxiety that seeps into my every fiber, distorting my perceptions and manifesting in my every movement and deed. This anxiety feels like running backwards and forwards at the same time, an internal sprint towards freedom and a simultaneous retreat from potential pitfalls. It's like being on a mental treadmill that goes nowhere and everywhere at once; the marathon of mind never stops running, and it's always me on that treadmill. Alone.

To outsiders, at times, I might appear normal, yet at other times I’m short in tone, irritable, dismissive, even nasty, and at times friendly, excited, and carefree moments later. This is totally unintentional yet purposeful at the same time; it is my defense. My patience wears thin, and my tolerance for trivialities evaporates. But this presentation is often a byproduct of a relentless, single-minded focus on one objective: getting off parole. Every ounce of my energy, every thought, is geared towards navigating this treacherous final stretch without incident. The "silliness and drivel of others" becomes an unbearable distraction, a potential hazard to my meticulously constructed path to liberty. My soul is intensely burdened, stretched taut by the sheer weight of anticipation and the terrifying fragility of my impending freedom.

Short timing it is laborious and tiresome nearly 30 year effort. It's a deep, visceral, and tangibly present dread that refuses to leave me for long. This anxiety ebbs and flows, and I feel like I’m standing on the precipice of freedom, a dream long deferred finally within my grasp yet surrounded by an infinite number of invisible tripwires. A misstep, a misinterpreted word, a petty argument, or an unexpected rule change – any one of these mundane occurrences holds the terrifying power to not just delay but utterly end my chance at an uneventful discharge from these invisible chains. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time isn’t just a saying to me. This isn't hypothetical; it's a stark, ever-present reality that has crushed the hopes of countless others I've seen and takes every ounce of what makes me, “me” to avoid a complete breakdown.

So, I just keep running. For now this is me. I survive in this silent, internal battle that I fight daily as I approach the end of my parole after years of incarceration in one form or another. It's the profound, soul-affecting cost of conditional freedom, a stark reminder that even as my discharge looms in the foreseeable future, the prison and my parole continue it’s hold on my life, manifesting as an anxiety unlike any other I've known.