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.

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.

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 the psychological literature, depression is often seen as a defense against sadness. But I'll take sadness any day. There is no contest. Sadness carries identification. You know where it's been and you know where it's headed. Depression carries no papers. It enters your country unannounced and uninvited. Its origins are unknown, but its destination always dead-ends in you.

Some struggles are so solitary that they drown in words.

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.

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.