Contemporaneous: Chapters 62 – 63
62. A terrifying fear strikes me on the train ride home. I didn’t take my own life. I didn’t reset. I haven’t relived the last week three times in a row. All of that is fanciful bullshit, the product of an unrestricted imagination – and imaginations should be fenced in somewhere. That’s how you define reality. But mine’s gone. I remember when I first went through anxiety, having a public hospital psychiatrist telling me that because I was a writer I was prone to losing touch with reality – he actually told me that. Then, when the panic reared, I’d tell myself I’d be okay, I’d try coping, but I…
Contemporaneous: Chapter 59
59. A woman sits behind a table just inside the door – she’s maybe fifty, with curly silver hair, pink horn-rimmed glasses, and wearing this mauve cardigan that weighs down her shoulders until they’re sagging. I want to say she looks good for her age, but then realize I’m her age, but just don’t see myself that way. I give her my name, she consults her iPad, ticks me off, and then points me to a table in the corner with the number “8” on it. There are other tables, too, guys seated at each, nervously smoothing out their hair or their blazers or whatever, a few of them even…