If only I had known a year ago what I'd be facing now. Until last year I lived with the innocent arrogance that my life was a simple product of effort, will, and design. But now I am a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy of wind, weight, and angle. Perhaps it is best we cannot see into our futures.

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.

The bottom line is that my life has already almost slipped away from me. I have two choices: I can end it or I can fight like hell to save it.

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.

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.

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.

If only I had known a year ago what I'd be facing now. Until last year I lived with the innocent arrogance that my life was a simple product of effort, will, and design. But now I am a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy of wind, weight, and angle. Perhaps it is best we cannot see into our futures.