I can no longer ignore the posts formulating in my head.  I have no therapist that can fit me in nor a psychiatrist that’s not on “permanent medical leave,” as her clinic tells me.  So, I’ve been suffering from an inability to focus, constant anxiety, and moderate-to-violent mood swings.  Secretly, I gently tempt the fates whenever I can.

I need help, but no one can help me but me—or so they say.  I argue, it’s hard enough for me to just ask for help; why can’t it be easy to receive that help?  You don’t tell a paraplegic he has to crawl before he can get into rehab.  Yet, there on the border of Normality, stands this army of Manifest Destiny indoctrinates puppeted by Bootstrap Bill Americano, high on justice for us.

I’m scared of what people who interact with me daily at work must think of me.  I’m sure they know I’m weird and maybe dumb.

Dumb isn’t the right word.  I’m awkward because I’m always fighting through a fog to say what I’m thinking.  Very often, midway through my first sentence, I’ve forgotten my intended topic.  I’m sick.  There’s something that makes focusing way too difficult to do.  I almost wish it were a tumor.  At least then, there’d be visible proof, something people can understand, wrong with me.  Instead, I’m traumatized and anxious and affective and it involves chemicals that you’ve never before heard of and will not bother remembering.  As the cliché goes, they’re scared of what they don’t understand.  All they know is Sling Blade and I Am Sam, neither of which was absent depictions of dangerous lunacy, nor are they even about the mentally ill, but the mentally handicapped.  Distinctions are not often clearly drawn in the media, so distinctions are sometimes seen as ignorable…

I’m going off on a rant.  The point is, I’m in pain.  I never know where my mind is going to take me.  After I’m done here, I need to meditate.  It’s getting harder to pretend everything is alright.

Fuck, I’m wallowing!  I want to hit something.  I want to cry.  I want, I want, I want.  I’m like a child.  I’m disgusted with myself.  I’ve been childish.  What’s wrong with me?  That isn’t me.  I’m responsible.  I’m punctual.  I’m diligent.  But right now, lately, even before Sang, I’ve been feeling absurd for dedicating myself to anything.  Everything has felt ethereal for months.  Sang’s death was merely the exclamation mark at the end of a long-thought-out statement: nothing lasts!

I feel clubbed by that exclamation mark.  My twitches have returned with violence.  My nausea has reduced my calorie-intake to somewhere around 1,000 calories.  My memory is non-existent, and my social anxiety is strangling.

If this is grief, it feels a lot like a continuous string of panic attacks.