I’m in the elevator going down to the mezzanine level. The mezzanine level holds the conference room, which is full of people, people with various degrees some even PHD’s, all waiting to hear from me. I feel my anxiety level rise, take flight actually as the elevator reaches its destination and the bell dings.

The doors open, they don’t wait for me to catch my breath. They spit me out onto the floor and I continue the conversation, the talk inside my head. That part of me that is mad begins to speak up, I argue this voice back. Shut up!. Stop it, stop it. You’re okay. You have the information these people are seeking. You are in the know and they know nothing, you are the golden one. You’ll be fine. I’m scheduled to speak forty minutes. You’ll get through it, soon it will be all over and you will have done well, you always do. I can’t wait to get back to my hotel room and change back into normal clothes. I hate this suit, I’m such a fraud; I’m not good enough to be wearing a suit. You’re not a fraud, you look good; you look the part. The conversation continues inside my head. What if I go completely blank? Oh God, what if I throw up? I feel like I’m going to throw up. You’re not going to throw up, you’ll do fine. Maybe they all play along, they can see I’m an idiot. Do they know I’m crazy? No one can tell, nobody knows.

I wasn’t always crazy. I can remember the exact moment it all began, when I invited the voices inside my head. It was summer and I was twelve. I was lying in my bed on my back, as the Milwaukee brace that I wore to correct scoliosis only allowed this one position. My brother and I shared bunk beds and my bunk allowed exactly 26 inches between the breast bar of my brace and my bedroom ceiling. The first movie at the Getty Street drive-in began playing only ten minutes earlier. The back of the drive-in butted up against our trailer park and I grew up being able to see movies playing on this outdoor big screen from my bedroom window. No sound, just vague images flashing in the distance. The TV was playing in the living room down the hall past the bathroom and past the only other bedroom. I was, again, staring at the objects and characters in the pattern of our bedroom ceiling. It was dark but I could still see the green-gray crevasses or indentations in the nicotine-white ceiling that created, with the right imagination, a Monet or a Vincent Van Gogh. I had finished tracing one particular piece with my finger when I heard a voice in my head tell me to touch it again. I touched it. Touch it again. I touched it. Touch it twice. I paused. What am I doing? What’s happening? I felt as though somehow my mind was being invaded and piece of me, of my innocent childhood was slipping away.

I didn’t listen, I didn’t touch it twice.