I drop the phone on the table again, this time pushing my chair back, away from it, my ears ringing and my heart pounding. It has always been a latent fear of mine that I might one day lose my fucking mind. That the super normal call of the void thoughts I have might one day take over and I’ll lose control to them. That instead of sitting on a fifteenth-floor balcony over Park Avenue and idly thinking, What if I jumped, I’d actually do it. Or that I might fill the silence of a movie theater with some horrifically offensive word, all because my mind thought, You know what would be the worst thing to do right now, and then a synapse misfires and I actually scream it. Or what if, on a walk with Dido, I come upon a teacup-sized kitten and valiantly bring it home only to present it and have a loved one shriek, That’s a rat! and then look down and see a panting rodent in my bare hand.

It’s why I could never do peyote or ayahuasca, no matter how many totally legit gurus Grayson knows, and why even the legal THC/CBD bath bombs I use can sometimes send me into a spiral. I’m afraid that something will loosen in my psyche and I will simply cease to have power over myself.

It’s why I get so uncomfortable and heartbroken when I see the many unhoused people of Los Angeles, walking around with signs and bare feet, talking to themselves, so often in anguish, especially when you can tell that they were once good-looking and were probably told by all the townies where they came from that they ought to give Hollywood a try.

It freaks me out.

I’ve told my therapist and she reminds me that it’s very normal to have fears like this. That it doesn’t mean it will happen. That our brains actually do the whole call of the void thing as a way of stretching limbs and considering all options available in order to make the safest choice.

I don’t share these fears with anyone else, however, lest I either seem more troubled than I am or even worse, more inconsiderate than I am. As if I’m actually saying I’m afraid of mental illness. When in fact, I’m actually afraid of being safe one second and in irreversible crisis the next.

So the fact that I feel like I might very well be losing my mind right now is making me more than uneasy. Angry at my therapist even. You said I’d be fine! You said nothing weird or fucked-up would happen!