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.

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.

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.

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.

The infinity of this vacancy, the pervasive pain, the longing for some spirit, some lightness, some joy - that's all that is left.

The images are visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic. They aren't laid down on the same tracks as thought. And sometimes, when they return to you, it is as if you feel them for the very first time. Memory lives on in the details, like the color of a room, a tone of a voice, the touch of a child, the smell of a man.

The body remembers what your mind forgets.