As kids, a lot of us imag­ine hav­ing super­pow­ers. I was an avid com­ic book read­er, and I often imag­ined being invis­i­ble. I nev­er thought I would actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence it, but I did. It wasn’t in a par­al­lel uni­verse — although it often felt that way. While serv­ing time in New York’s pris­ons, I spent 2,054 days in soli­tary con­fine­ment. I was out of sight and invis­i­ble to oth­er human beings — and even­tu­al­ly, even to myself.

The very essence of life is human contact, and the affirmation of existence that comes with it. Losing that contact, you lose your sense of identity. You become nothing.

After only a short time in soli­tary, I felt all of my sens­es start to dimin­ish. There was noth­ing to see but gray walls. In New York’s so-called Spe­cial Hous­ing Units, or SHUs, most cells have sol­id steel doors, and some don’t have win­dows. You can’t even tape up pic­tures or pho­tographs; they have to be kept in an enve­lope. To fight the blank­ness, I count­ed bricks and mea­sured the walls. I stared obses­sive­ly at the bolts on the door to my cell.

There was noth­ing to hear except emp­ty, echo­ing voic­es from oth­er parts of the prison. I was so lone­ly that I hal­lu­ci­nat­ed words com­ing out of the wind. They sound­ed like whis­pers. Some­times I smelled the paint on the wall, but more often, I just smelled myself, revolt­ed by my own scent. There was no touch. My food was pushed through a slot. Doors were acti­vat­ed by buzzers, even the one that led to a lit­er­al cage direct­ly out­side of my cell for one hour per day of ​“recre­ation.”

Even time had no mean­ing in the SHU. The lights were kept on for 24 hours. I often found myself won­der­ing if an event I was rec­ol­lect­ing had hap­pened that morn­ing or days before. I talked to myself. After a while, I began to get scared that the guards would come in and kill me and leave me hang­ing in the cell. Who would know if some­thing hap­pened to me? The space I inhab­it­ed was invis­i­ble to the out­side world, just like I was.

I try to explain to peo­ple how the sen­so­ry depri­va­tion and the absence of human con­tact affects a per­son. I try to make them see how much we need human val­i­da­tion. The very essence of life is human con­tact, and the affir­ma­tion of exis­tence that comes with it. Los­ing that con­tact, you lose your sense of iden­ti­ty. You become noth­ing. That’s what I mean when I say I became invis­i­ble even to myself.

Any­one lack­ing famil­iar­i­ty with our state prison sys­tem would prob­a­bly guess I must have been a pret­ty scary, out-of-con­trol pris­on­er. But I nev­er com­mit­ted one act of vio­lence dur­ing my entire sen­tence. Instead, a series of ​“tick­ets,” or dis­ci­pli­nary write-ups for prison rule vio­la­tions, were pun­ished with a total of more than five years in ​“the box.”

In New York, guards give out tick­ets like pen­ny can­dy. I received an end­less stream of tick­ets, each one more absurd than the last. When I tried to use art­work to stay sane, I was tick­et­ed for hav­ing too many pen­cils. Excess pen­cils are con­sid­ered sharp­ened objects, or weapons. Anoth­er time, I had too many postage stamps, which in prison are used like cur­ren­cy and are contraband.

My case is far from unusu­al. A 2012 study by the New York Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union found that five out of six of the 13,000 SHU sen­tences hand­ed out every year are for non­vi­o­lent mis­be­hav­ior, rather than vio­lent acts. On any giv­en day, some 3,800 peo­ple are in iso­lat­ed con­fine­ment in the state, many for months or years. Those accused of more seri­ous prison offens­es, and those deemed an ongo­ing risk to ​“safe­ty and secu­ri­ty,” have been held in soli­tary for 20 years or more. In hand­ing out these sen­tences-with­in-sen­tences, prison offi­cials act as pros­e­cu­tors, wit­ness­es, judge and jury. There is no defense counsel.

Every­one knows that prison is sup­posed to take away your free­dom. But soli­tary doesn’t just con­fine your body; it kills your soul. And it makes it hard to ever live among oth­er peo­ple again.

Because of the way I left prison, based on the out­come of a court case, I had no advance notice of my release date. I was in Upstate, a super­max prison way up by the Cana­di­an bor­der. I was in soli­tary con­fine­ment when a guard came to my cell one morn­ing and said, ​“No break­fast today. You’re get­ting out.” I was hand­cuffed and searched, and then brought to the gate, where I was uncuffed, asked to sign a paper, and giv­en a bag of my prop­er­ty and $40.

Then I was out­side, by myself. It was 7 a.m. I just stood there for a long time until a van came to take me to the bus sta­tion. It was like a dream. They gave me a tick­et and I climbed onto the bus, and I was so over­whelmed that I slept for nine hours. When I woke up I was in the Port Author­i­ty Bus Ter­mi­nal, which has to be one of the most crowd­ed, crazy places in the world.

I remem­ber fold­ing up right there in the bus sta­tion. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was hav­ing my first pan­ic attack. I was sweat­ing, and I could feel my heart beat­ing in my chest and my eyes dart­ing back and forth. I just slid down to the floor in a corner.

I remem­ber a home­less guy com­ing up to me and ask­ing if I was okay, and then he said, ​“Oh, you just came home.” I don’t know whether he’d been incar­cer­at­ed him­self, or had just seen things like this before in the bus sta­tion. But he knew what was happening.

The police came, and I told them I just got out. They escort­ed me out of the bus sta­tion. It’s sad, but it made me feel com­fort­able again — being escort­ed by peo­ple in uni­forms, and being told what to do. I was in such bad shape that the police sent me straight to the hos­pi­tal, to Belle­vue. And I didn’t get out of there for sev­er­al days. I was sup­posed to imme­di­ate­ly report to parole once I reached the city. So with­in a day of leav­ing soli­tary, I had vio­lat­ed parole — and I end­ed up being sent back to prison.

The next time I got out, I was leav­ing from gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, not soli­tary, and I had a men­tal health diag­no­sis — I am bipo­lar — so I was able to get some help, although it wasn’t easy. The sys­tem is stacked against for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple in so many ways, mak­ing it near­ly impos­si­ble to get hous­ing, jobs, or pub­lic assis­tance. If you’ve been dam­aged by soli­tary con­fine­ment and can bare­ly func­tion in the free world, then it’s even harder.

You nev­er com­plete­ly recov­er. You just learn to live with the scars it leaves behind.

This excerpt orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voic­es from Soli­tary Con­fine­ment, pub­lished by The New Press. Reprint­ed here with per­mis­sion. Copy­right © 2015 by Five Mualimm-ak