The Fact That You Were Essentially Dead

• This Seems Impossible To Me. It Seems Biologically Impossible To Stay The Same Size, Although I Must. It Seems One Must Always Be Either Bigger Or Smaller Than They Were At Some Arbitrary Point In Time To Which All Things Are Compared. The Panties That Are Possibly Tighter Than They Were. When? You Can't Say When. But You Are Absolutely Positive No Question That It's True.

But In Some Ways, The Most Significant Choices One Makes In Life Are Done For Reasons That Are Not All That Dramatic, Not Earth-shaking At All; Often Enough, The Choices We Make Are, For Better Or For Worse, Made By Default.

Soon Madness Has Worn You Down. It’s Easier To Do What It Says Than Argue. In This Way, It Takes Over Your Mind. You No Longer Know Where It Ends And You Begin. You Believe Anything It Says. You Do What It Tells You, No Matter How Extreme Or Absurd. If It Says You’re Worthless, You Agree. You Plead For It To Stop. You Promise To Behave. You Are On Your Knees Before It, And It Laughs.

When I Returned, Everything Was Different. Everything Was Calm, And I Felt Very Clean. Everything Was In Order. Everything Was As It Should Be. I Had A Secret. It Was A Guilty Secret, Certainly. But It Was My Secret. I Had Something To Hold On To. It Was Company. It Kept Me Calm. It Filled Me Up And Emptied Me Out.

My Brain Sometimes Departs From The Agreed-upon Reality, And My Private Reality Is A Very Lonely Place. But In The End, I'm Not Sure I Wish I'd Never Gone There.