I'd never planned on working all my life. I'd had this fantasy that I'd get married and suddenly find a calling beyond the humiliating need to make a living. Art or charity work, babies—something like that.

She suggested I keep a log of my dreams as a way of tracking the 'waning intensity of suffering.''I don't like the term "dream journal,"' she told me at our in-person appointment in June. 'I prefer "night vision log.

I wasn't entirely awake, but I couldn't cross the line into sleep. 'Go. Go on. The abyss is right there. Just a few more steps.' But I was too tired to break through the glass.

I could feel the certainty of a reality leeching out of me like calcium from a bone. I was starving my mind into obliqueness. I felt less and less. Words came and I spoke them in my head, then nestled in on the sound of them, got lost in the music.

I got sloppy and lazy at work, emptier, less there. This pleased me, but having to do things became very problematic. When people spoke, I had to repeat what they'd said in my mind before understanding it.

At work, I took hour-long naps in the supply closet under the stairs during my lunch breaks.

Education is directly proportional to anxiety, as you've probably learned, having gone to Columbia.

For a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted.

Sometimes Waldemar loves me too much. He thinks it is better I stay with him on Earth, rather than be happy in the other place without him.