This is what I know.

Part 1
I know that I'm an opportunist who will milk any situation, and that if I'm truly honest with myself, I have painted my way into a corner.

Part 2
The docs tell me that I have paranoid and sociopathic tendencies, and that I suffer from severe procrastination that stems from dissociation. They suggest that I go to therapy regularly, and probably think that because I am paying my medical bills upfront, by check, I can afford several sessions of cognitive behavior therapy per week.

There goes the money T wired to my account.

Part 3
I've never liked therapy. I was brought up to believe that people with friends and family don't need "professional help." The only reason that I even saw the therapist was---well, I don't know exactly. The thought of being in a hospital and having the doctor call on a psychiatric consult seemed exotic at the time, like I belonged in an episode of ER or House or Grey's Anatomy. A small part of me believed that I would suddenly become Katherine Heigl or Sandra Oh, just because I was staying in the hospital. And besides, I thought it would make another great story to tell my friends, another facet of my life to spin into allegory or fiction.

Part 4
This was me, on Wednesday: in a hospital bed, drowsy, popping pills. I'd slept for most of the previous night and that morning, and I'd talked with a psychiatrist. Scans and x-rays and all sorts of tests were conducted on me, and one thing was clear: I suffered from anxiety.

Part 5
Is there anyone who doesn't suffer from anxiety? Isn't anxiety just a sign that you're truly alive, that you're doing things, that you're scared of things, that you're not braindead? Isn't anxiety as natural as sweat and tears? Breathing and heartbeat? What's the big deal with "suffering from anxiety"?

Part 6
Yesterday, second visit with the psychiatrist: I told him all sorts of things. Like, how sometimes a sense of doom will come over me, and I'll be so scared that I can't move. It'll happen at the oddest times, but mostly in the dark, when I'm alone. I'll imagine a man coming out of the dark to attack me, and all of a sudden I'll be petrified and absolutely terrified. I want to scream, but there's no sound in my throat. I want to move, but my legs are stuck in place. Tears gush out of my eye sockets, uncontrollably.

But I only told him about my hysterical fear after I told him about my severe procrastination. How I can't seem to do anything on time - pay bills, do homework, call people back - because of no particular reason but that I don't want to. I think I have a phobia of success. Success, to me, equals loneliness, and I don't want to be lonely. I already feel so alone all the time, and success - monetary, status, academic - would only create a larger gulf between myself and the people I want to relate to.

The first thing I told the doc, though, was that I'm horny. It came out as a joke, a sort of ice-breaker. But after he laughed, there was a glint in his eyes that let me know what he was really thinking. He was going to write down my inappropriate joke and think about it some more, and maybe suggest to colleagues that something had happened to me when I was younger, that I'd been sexually molested or abused. So I qualified my joke, explained it away as something I always do out of nervous anxiety, and when he asked if all of my friends did the same thing, I looked away and laughed. "Friends?" I'd said, incredulously. "I texted people that I'm in the hospital, and only three people bothered to text me back. One of those people didn't seem concerned at all, but sounded purely snide about the situation."

And that's how I started talking about people and how they can't be trusted, and how I've always had so much on my mind concerning the nature of human beings. I trust blindly, because that is my way of trusting completely. I love blindly, because it's the easiest way to fall in and out of love and know that I'm giving all I have to give.

And yet, despite all of my blind actions, I know instinctively that there is a nugget of my self hidden deep within me, and that nothing negative - failure, betrayal, destitution, hunger, etc - can take it away from me. It is this nugget of self that I keep hidden and do not share, and if by some stroke of fate I found happiness in a particular situation and vowed that I would stay in that situation for as long as I live - with a lover, with a spouse, with friends, with my station in life, with my career, etc. - I would give away that nugget of self. My identity would be in whatever I vowed to encompass, and if that thing ever went away, I wouldn't know who I am.

Part 7
My memory is slipping. The doc found that out during our first session together, and he attributed that to my concussion. I nodded, but what I wanted to say was, "I couldn't tell you anything about any recent day - and that's not because I collapsed in a pharmacy parking lot and hit my head hard on the concrete. It's because I've been distant from my reality. I've been distant with myself. Nothing I do feels like it's really me doing it. Nothing I say feels like my own belief. I feel like I'm always acting, like I am not anything people believe me to be. I feel like a fraud."

Rob tells me that my memory sucks, and I laugh because I know it's true. Days can be boiled down to three or less sentences, and not out of boring circumstances. I can string together a story and write out a tale, but when it comes to my life, I don't know what it's about or what to do with it. There is no arch, no skeleton, no conclusion to be made that isn't purely existential.

Part 8
Today, I woke up, and everything felt brand new. I had sloughed off everything that had once defined me - my grades, my internships, my political activism, my writing, my friendships, etc - and decided to take along for the rest of my life journey only the things that I really need. Everything else can be picked up again in due time, but for now, I'm all right.

I don't know where my sense of resolve came from. Maybe it's the pills prescribed by the doc. Maybe all I really needed was to talk to a professional. Maybe I'm done with feeling bad about myself, about my circumstances, about my actions. Maybe I'm ready to remember every facet of every day and stake claim to everything I do and am as my own.

Part 9
This is what I know: A guy stole my parking spot on Tuesday night, and I got out of my car to curse him out. The next thing I knew, I was in a hospital, and the nurse told me I'd collapsed.

Now I'm in my own bed, after having forgotten about my life for three days, and everything makes sense. I don't know why everything suddenly makes sense. I don't even know if I truly think everything makes sense, or if it's a defense mechanism (a kind of denial) which regulates my emotions and my well-being that's making me believe that everything makes sense.

But I'll tell you what I do know: I'm okay.