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, he told me I was heading for a nervous breakdown. Mental hospitals are full of authors who lost the ability to distinguish fiction from reality, he told me. Among other things, he asked if I’d heard voices. I told him I hadn’t but, terrified, asked him what I should do if I did. He told me not to listen to them. Around the same time, I had a friend who…
Two
I lost my best friend early last year. Because of lockdowns, retrenchment, and a jealous ex (although not an ex at the time) we didn’t get to hang out as much in the last few years. When she died, there was this immediate regret about all these missed opportunities, and guilt over choices I made that contributed to that. I’ve lost other people before – one of my earliest memories is my grandfather’s funeral, and kissing his cold cheek at the open-coffin ceremony. I would’ve only been three or four. Some time later, I recall my grandmother, dressed all in black, draped over his grave at the funeral, sobbing uncontrollably,…