• Sleeping Wide Awake

    Eleven

    We’re programmed to live outside our heads. We’ll think about things when we need to, but that thinking will function within the parameters that genetics, upbringing, and environment have programmed into us. Most people never become truly self-aware. They never – or at least rarely – think outside of that programming. One exception is when you experience something like anxiety or depression, and that whole thought process turns inward. Then it becomes this scathing, torturous, unrelenting self-examination through every moment. Even the good times elicit that self-reflection and, as a byproduct of that, doubt and insecurity. I’m not going to go into work too much – at least not now.…

  • Sleeping Wide Awake

    Ten

    This started with a voice. The threat of voices have long threatened my adult life. Going through my cluster of panic attacks and anxiety as an 18-year-old, I regularly saw a psychiatrist at a public hospital. One particularly horrible day,…

  • Sleeping Wide Awake

    Nine

    In 2011, a car ran a light and struck me down at a traffic crossing, breaking my right leg and dislocating my ankle. Later, I would learn that as the bones broke, they hooked the nerve, and wishboned, stretching the…