The longer this pandemic flows on, the more it seems the days grow somehow quieter, eerily quiet in fact. The bar beneath us hasn’t made a peep in well over a month. There are fewer cars on the street below, fewer voices on the corner with no one waiting for the bus. I know it’s […]
Tag: depression
Quarantine, Day 15
It feels like everyone I know right now has just enough of a sore throat to wonder. We just found out a day ago that we’re now one and two degrees away from fellow colleagues who have tested positive for covid-19. The creeping dread follows that knowledge. I check my temperature often. I shake off […]
Quarantine, Day 13
Right after I returned from twenty-seven months of Peace Corps service, the next three years were absolute mental hell. I had actually returned by boat, leaving from Barcelona and landing in Fort Lauderdale, and maybe it’s because of the sea legs I couldn’t shake for nearly a month, but I began to believe in the […]
Changing Trains
There’s this moment after leaving the Secaucus station where the train ducks into a tunnel, and the deeper into the dark it goes, the quicker the air pressure changes as if to suck the little sickle cell up the vein to the heart of Manhattan. From under the Hudson, all the passengers are adjusting their […]
Some Thoughts on Robin Williams and Mental Illness
When Robin Williams died a few days ago, I got a text asking if it was real and was a little bombarded by all the online commentary about it. I didn’t want to think about it; I didn’t want to acknowledge it had happened; I didn’t want to write anything about it, and all that’s […]
Deciding to be Happy Already.
I’m not one to tout karma, but last year when load after load of bad news kept coming my way from my grandfather dying to multiple graduate school rejections, I felt like something good was destined to happen. I even felt like I deserved it. After all, I’d hit rock bottom, and it was past […]
