The idiot man who is your colleague means no harm in his intrusion of your personal space. He shoves his head in front of yours while he’s standing beside you. He’s stupidly trying to be funny. But he takes you by surprise, and your body starts shaking, and your head starts racing, and you’re off and gone.

You’re trying to find your way back, but the world is a blur. Desperately, you want to convince yourself that nothing scary is happening now. You tell yourself that right now you are okay. Nothing is awry. You just have a stupid colleague, that is all.

But the message is not delivered from your brain to the rest of your body. Your body rebels against your brain. It fights back, and insists that your brain is wrong. Body insists on never being wrong again. Brain has no chance in this fight.

Somehow, you get home. There’s a part of you that’s hungry, and there’s a part of you that just wants to die or sleep or both. You decide that if you’re going to continue with this life you need to eat something. The walk from your bedroom to your kitchen feels Herculean. You live in 860 square feet. The kitchen is seconds away from your bedroom, but it might as well be in another county.

You stumble your way into the kitchen, and you find baked bbq chips with a December 2013 expiration date. You then find slices of Gouda cheese. Great, a carb and a protein! A balanced meal will have to come another day. The chips are used as if they are crackers with the cheese. It would all be amusing if it weren’t for the fact that this is truly all you could muster for dinner. No lie.

You used to dream of a day when this madness would end.You used to think it was a dream deferred for another day. But, no. It is a dream defunct.