What I'd say to my psychiatrist if I could find the words

Dear Dr. Boyd,

If I were a more eloquent speaker, I'd tell you how crazy the last month has been. If I weren't so shy, I wouldn't be phased when you asked me how I was doing. I wouldn't blink a few times and stammer out that I am fine, especially since we both know I'm not or I wouldn't be in your office in the first place.

But I'm not an eloquent speaker, and I am shy, with little areas locked away so tightly that even I don't know why I'm hurting sometimes. See, doc, I had this friend who used to tell me the best way to deal with problems was to bury them under the other stuff until they went away. I was young and naive, and it sounded plausible at the time: If I just focused on my music or my work, all the bad stuff wouldn't have time to muddle up my brain.

Now I'm a little bit older and a little bit wiser. He's gone, and I know that his advice was crap. But now the pendulum has swung the other way. Instead of burying my problems, I try to bring them to light in hopes that others will understand they're not alone. I trust early and easily, almost to the point of excess, and I expect others to trust me in return. I discover that everyone is dealing with something. Then we walk the road together for a while until our paths lead in different directions.

I'm trying to work through everything — my past, my stress, my life — on my own. Lord knows therapy didn't do any good. For all the cash I dropped on weekly sessions, I don't feel any more healed that the day I walked in. Every "breakthrough" I've experienced has come through a tightly knit group of friends who act as my sounding board. I figure I'm nothing if I don't believe in humanity. We're all in the same boat together, right?

It's just that right now, I feel so mixed up and strange. The book release has stretched me to my limits. And I'm so fearful of losing the use of one of my hands that I can hardly function day to day without breaking down. I'm scared of being alone, not because I'd hurt myself, but because I am hurting. I guess there's no magic pill for that, is there?

I'm not an eloquent speaker. I'm not even an eloquent writer, which is why I gave that up long ago. It appears, then, that my thoughts will never make it onto paper in a way that sounds right to me, and the words on paper will never translate into speech that conveys what I wrote.

I'm going to struggle to drag myself out the door today, go to work and impatiently wait to drive across the city to your office. I'm going to sit in the waiting room and read this over and over, trying to figure out what to say without sounding weak and helpless. And maybe when today is over, things will make a little more sense.

Or maybe this is one long nightmare, and I'll awake in my bed as this dream slips just out of reach and I'm left with that odd feeling that something important happened while I was asleep, though I'll never know what.