Contemporaneous: Chapters 73 – 74
73. I don’t sleep well, but it’s not because of typical sleep troubles, but because I’m excited to get the week underway. When did I last feel like this? I can’t remember – not specifically. I was once like this, but that excitement and anticipation congealed into the mire that’s made everything so arduous. No more, though. I begin to catalogue what I need to do. Autumn. She’s the first stop. I want, I need to tell her my news. And not because I’m boasting, but because there’s a purity to her happiness – she’ll genuinely feel good for me, and there’s something about, some validation that I’ve never experienced…
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…