digitaldiscipline ◾ ◾ Fuck you, brain.

Few non-traumatic things suck as much as not knowing what's real.

In the darkness before my alarm went off at six this morning, I lay awake in bed, alternately chilled and sweating, thinking that my life, the one I have here with all of you, wasn't just a lie, but didn't even exist, and was merely the last fevered and febrile imaginings of my subconscious before I was going to wake up and spend the next six months in jail for some trivial car-related issue.

"What should I put on the return address card for them to send my personal effects? My parents' address? What if they move? My address? Why do I keep mis-spelling it? It doesn't matter.... if I can't work for that long, the mortgage won't get paid, and it won't be my house anymore. I need to move the car. And roll up the windows."

Anxiety is one thing, but waking up in my bed was no respite - my brain was more than half convinced that this was an escapist fantasy from that awful reality, and even talking it through with K barely took the edge off. I'm still a little creeped out by it.

But, man... going through life, convinced that it isn't real... I can see why some folks need to be institutionalized. I like to think I'm rational and objective, but that was incredibly fucked up.

[also, an excuse to use a newly-stolen icon, which will replace the me-as-a-south-park-character]