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classes and continuing to attend just frequently enough that the professors could feel like I was just there to personally insult them by not participating. And I had these headaches, and these hot flashes that were, mysterious. I really, like really just wanted a normal life: a car and to not have to work on it myself, a girlfriend who wasn’t actually just a hostage in a hostile friendship, a bank, er credit union account with money in it, a MacBook 190 I didn’t have to take a personal loan out to buy.

Truth is that a lot of people had it worse and in my late nineteen-nineties government programmed brain an unexpected sub-routine was triggered. These headaches. I took fourteen ibuprofen in one gulp out of the first-aid kit in the break room at Service Federal Credit Union one afternoon in front of a crowd of shocked and disturbed coworkers. I saw my actions as completely reasonable for one who could only see the common reality with one eye shut. They removed all OTC medication from the first-aid kit after me. I was the flood.

The hot flashes were semi-predictable. I would get them while indoors. They would strike kind of randomly other than that. Were there people always there, looking at me, questioning my perceptions? Maybe, or maybe I imagined those people. It was damned uncomfortable either way. I only had one solution, which as a teller, was unwelcome to management. I had to immediately stop whatever I was doing and run outside and tear my shirt off. Then I would have to stay outside and breathe as slowly as I could to calm down and let the moment pass while