An old boss of mine once told me that I somehow remain calm even when everything around me is going to shit, which is I think why people often ask me to help them move. (For instance: I once drove my friend Leila all the way from Baltimore to New Orleans in a huge moving truck and we would both be dead now if I hadn’t kept my cool when her cat climbed into the center console at a gas station in Mississippi.)

Well, here’s something related to that, I think: my brain is prone to upswings and downswings. I suffer through them all day long. I’ll wake up feeling one way, feel the complete opposite way somewhere in the middle, and go to sleep feeling like the whole world is about to explode. It’s awful! Really, it shreds me. I am mercurial as hell.

And the thing is, I don’t know that anyone has a clue. I remain calm throughout it all. I mean, what else can I do? I know my mind is going to shift into something else at some point. So I grit my teeth and endure it every single day of my life.

If only my friends knew! (Maybe they do?)

How do I keep it together? My circuitry should have blown wide open a long time ago. I don’t know how I’m alive!