Switching Tracks
I always knew my brain was working against me.
I didn’t know precisely how my brain was carrying out its campaign against me, but I knew for sure there was a problem. I knew my brain was not helpful.
Even as a child, my thoughts were dark. My views of the world were morose. Any visions I had of the future were cut short by tragedy I could foresee.
In the beginning, my brain told me everything was doomed. Then, little by little, my brain told me anything I had would be ruined. Later, it told me to ruin things.
It was clear as a bell that brisk December night in my first semester of college when my brain directed me to withdraw from college immediately. I stayed awake all night until dawn, pacing from my dark college dorm room to the shared common room, where I smoked my way through boxes of Marlboro Lights. As soon as there was a little light in the sky, I moved to the frigid steps of the building that housed the Dean’s Office. I sat there for hours, waiting for the office staff to arrive and find my teary, tragic self looking hopeless and pathetic.
