Up to this point, you’ve guided me toward a simple yet pivotal realization about myself: I may not have some fundamental genetic flaw that makes me incapable of having appropriate feelings and managing my life. There may be a logical explanation for why I feel the way that I do. My first reaction to that was joy and relief.

My second reaction is, What do I do now? My stress and fear are still here, as are all of my oddities and inhibitions. I used to blame those things on a broken brain. Lacking that excuse, it’s just me out here, a grown man who doesn’t know how to manage his feelings.

It’s hard to pin down exactly what I’m searching for. I know that there’s more in my past that can explain my present. But explaining it and actually fixing it are two different things. I’m having an anxious morning today, and it has brought with it a strong dose of “nothing can fix you”.

I should pause until this mood passes. I have to make a phone call this morning to cancel an appointment, and it’s a call I could have made two weeks ago. But I didn’t, and now we’re approaching short-notice territory and I’m afraid that they’ll be mad. I do this kind of thing all the time. I’d say that I feel an inappropriate level of anxiety because of it and a thousand other tiny things just like it.

Off to work.