I can't stand myself. I'm scared that if I let myself think, I'll spiral so far down that I'll never come back up for air. I don't want to be crazy. I don't. I don't want visions from God. I don't want to see the cameras, check the locked door six more times, shake when the tires veer too close to the curb. I don't want to scream every time I see my reflection blink. I don't want to see my reflection blink. How do I convince myself that I still have time to build a life worth living when I lose myself every day in my delusions? Will I one day stop returning to reality? Will I still have time to build a life worth living if I don't? Do I live in the rot, let it consume me and wait to forget, or do I make something of myself, just to lose it the next time I have an episode? I lose hours talking to myself. I lose myself in the hours in between. And I'm terrified to lose everything. I religiously keep receipts and old packaging, mementos of every average Tuesday evening, because what if what if what if? What if I reach thirty and do not remember being twenty two? What if this is all I have to remember that I had a life before I lost it? What if I don't reach thirty and this collection of memories is the only thing left of me? Does a person's potential die when their mind begins to lie, or when they begin to believe it? I don't know if I have psychotic episodes anymore. It's more like episodes of lucidity to break up my average day of hiding from the NSA or my landlord or my neighbor or the ghosts or the devil or God or my mother or myself. Will I ever be a real person? If I build a life worth living, will I have my mind long enough to settle into it? I look to the future and there's a fog I can't quite see through. I'm afraid when I get there, that the past will look the same.