I remember that terrible, suffocating day, where I lay at the mercy of the heavens, sitting still on my living room floor as the phone rang. There was no electricity in my house that day, and the summer heat was making things seem twice as bad as they probably were. Minutes later, my head in my hands, I remember the sinking feeling that there was no solution to this, and that I had started something I could not stop. All the while, I kept thinking that there was something else that was the cause of all this; I thought it all to be some madness that only summer could bring. It was like Meursault said - the Sun killed him.

It is quite hard to convey just how bad things were getting. Of course, they are all trivial when sufficient abstraction is placed, but most emotional turmoil can be reasoned away, no? By far the worst thing was the feeling that no-one was understanding me, and that something said in good intent could be (unknowingly) twisted so as to have its meaning totally altered. A feeling that there was no-one to turn to, you say? Well, something like that. But it was also accompanied by a worry that I had a serious flaw in the way I conducted myself, and that perhaps all my interactions were doomed to some sort of failure due to an off-hand remark by me, most likely in jest.

It is now a memory, one that I remembered so vividly today, as the heat slowly made itself felt. I remember afternoons spent where my mind was literally withering away, and where I thought that just some time away and I could conquer this madness...and yes, that was the one true thing in this affair. Time spent stepping outside my small world helped bring in a new perspective, and, would you believe it, most things worked out for the better. What of the lessons learned from the experience, one might ask. They are sufficiently personal so as to be omitted here. But yes, it happened, and will forever be.