My wife told me that her version of the story starts here:

We're sitting in the car, driving to my dad's house. We're passing the Walmart and the AC is fighting the Vegas heat, the stifling air quality two days after the Fourth of July. She takes my hand. "I'm sure it's fine," she says, then grimaces. This is a validating aha moment for me at the time—she has doubts. Later, she says she regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth. But what if it's not fine?

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My wife and I went to the dentist recently (a thrilling start to any story, I know).  I was just in for a routine cleaning, her for the first of a series of more involved appointments.  But that day was just an exam for her, and, finished before I was, she sat near me and made small talk with the hygienist while I made garbled sounds around the vacuum, water, and polishing tools.

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I started to worry about living today.

I was worried before about surviving.

Food.

When will it run out? Where will it come from? At what cost? At what risk? For how long? Who will it feed?

Water. Soap. Medicine. Toiletries.

Today… 

Will I pretend everything is okay enough that I can write? Read? Crochet? Make a font, make something fun to eat?

Even some of the worst apocalypse novels are told via diary.

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"Are you hallucinating?" 

It sounds like such a simple and important question. But there are several catches that people don't realize when they want to hear yes or no.

First question: do I know I'm hallucinating? I usually have a pretty decent grasp on that for the big stuff, but not everyone does. Corpse, not there. Dog I don't have, not there. Hallucinations. 

But is that flash of light in the corner of my eye from traffic out the window, or my own mind? Is it just a trick of the light? Is staring at a trick of the light unsurely for way too long a hallucination? 

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I get an idea. 

A few minutes later, the very distinct thought: I need to stop thinking about this too hard. Or I need a pen.

My fingers twitch.  

Pen.

It can’t move fast enough on the page, chaos that will be a brief note in a dated, tagged table of contents. 

Tucked in the back pocket of that notebook that is rarely far from me is a sheet of paper with emergency information about me on it. 

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As someone into grammar and linguistics, who debates the requirements of a split infinitive and the correctness of implied antecedents and whether you can punctuate dialogue with semicolons, for fun, language is in my head a lot. 

As someone with schizophrenia, not to mention autism, language gets messy. 

I’ve pondered making a mini conlang based on superlatives. 

Tired, tireder, tiredest. 

The thing is that the difference between “tired” or “very tired” or “sleepy” or “exhausted” can mean very different things to lots of people. 

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So I saw a psychiatrist through an online urgent care service after remembering that it was an option, and started on a new antipsychotic. 

I had a lot of mixed feelings about going back on meds. At first, I felt like it was a cynical move—the action that confirmed the thought that I wouldn’t get better without meds, that I was dependent on them again, that I was worse now than I was back when I got off of them or at any point in between. 

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I’m writing. It’s going really well. Pages and pages of ink in my beloved dot grid Moleskine. So many pages, I think to comment to friends about my comparatively unpretentious but equally beloved Bic pen that has somehow lasted me almost sixty total pages, plus about half of my previous Moleskine, and months of Word of the Day Post It notes, mailed letters, and other miscellany. I included a picture of the inside of the front cover of my notebook, a gift from my fiancee, with that inside cover inscribed by her at the spot we met on the second anniversary of it, a callback to our first conversation—notebooks. 

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I swore when my shoulder cramped, which was interesting, because I’d kind of assumed I was nonverbal at the moment, based on the way my thoughts flowed, or didn’t, and a familiar feeling somewhere in my throat, though I hadn’t tested it. 

I couldn't blame my shoulder for cramping; my disorientation at speaking came with the realization that I’d been lying on my office floor staring at the very bottom of my bookshelves again. 

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There are ups and downs to trying hard to appear normal (whatever that may mean). One downside is that it’s easy to convince even yourself that nothing is wrong, if you look in the mirror and all looks well. Especially if the facade thoroughly convinces others, who voice that very thought. It’s easy to think you're exaggerating or lying even to yourself, especially when you have a real disorder that skews reality just like that. 

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