The simple fact is you can't will away mental illness any more than you can a headache and trying to do so only wastes precious time. I wish I knew that then. It wasn't until 8/30/2000 that I hit the wall, marking the first time that suicide went from idle thought to serious consideration. By November my ability to function day to day was half that of what it was in July. I couldn’t control my emotions at all, I was terrified of people, things, ideas, and leaving the house. It was like the scene from ‘Clockwork Orange’ where the guy is forced to watch all these things he didn’t want to see, didn’t have to see. It couldn’t be stopped. The cycling thoughts of death and suffering would be there when I went to sleep and there again when I woke up. There was no way to distract it and it was slowly driving me mad. The onset of Winter accelerated the cycling but I still stayed in college. School was the last thing that connected me to any semblance of structure but by now I couldn’t go unless I called up the school's therapist to talk me out of the house. I slept at all hours of the day. If I were to describe what it felt like trying to think, I’d say it was trying to drive a car on ice. Every turn and movement no matter how small was exaggerated into something huge and dangerous. It wasn’t that my parents didn’t care, they just didn’t know any better I guess. When I was still in the fog as a kid I must have made up all sorts of things. They did send me to a therapist for a short while but she wasn’t able to get past the obvious discovery that I was Eccentric. After that, I suppose they figured me cured. There was no stopping the inevitable...