It wasn’t a surprise that I ended up in the hospital. The main surprise was how long it took me to get there. I’d been wondering about it for years, even fantasizing about it occasionally. It was just another little joke I had with myself. My breakdown would be both clearly inevitable (so nobody felt bad because it would obviously only be my fault) and gradual (so nobody would suspect there was a moment when they could have stopped it), but also would contain a sudden event (so everyone would know when it had definitively happened, which would be, no doubt, a relief for us all). It would have
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