Diary of a Mad Man

“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse As a child, I hated when someone told me to sit still and be quiet, and rightly so. I was young and full of energy; every minute of being still and silent was a minute of missing out on this magnificent life. Then, as I grew older and entered into teenage and young adult years, it grew into a fear with a capital “F” of being still and silent; for as soon as I was quiet and still, the noise in my head got increasingly louder and more powerful. If the chatters of my head were beautiful, joyful, and empowering, that would have been uplifting. But they were voices of judgment, negativity, and self-loathing, nothing else. To me, those chatters, voices, and thoughts were me. My head would chatter day and night, even in my sleep. Noise, heaviness, thinking, and more thinking, sometimes my head felt like it was about to explode. I wasn’t even aware I was thinkin...