I always feel bad laughing at people who act crazy. But sometimes the things they do are so damned funny. I wonder what I'd look like if I slipped a few notches on the mental-health index.

It's enough just to speak when spoken to, to give some minimal reaction to a stimulus. But to actually be the stimulus doesn't even occur to me.

I should come with a consumer warning, like the labels that say "Handle with care" or "May be hazardous to your health." I am unfit for human consumption. I struggle to articulate how awful and isolating this feels, but I can't find the words.

I'm getting less good at faking it. People in my family are noticing and asking what's wrong. My friends give me invitations to talk, to cry. I love them for their caring, but I want to run from it. I have lost their language, their facility with words that convey feelings. I am in new territory and feel like a foreigner in theirs.

In these flashes of insight, I understand for a moment that one of the great dividends of darkness is an increased sensitivity to the light.

People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.

Psychologists call it "free-floating" anxiety. What contradictory words. Anxiety doesn't free-float. It stalks. It attacks. It lands on you with a thud.