Day of the Drill

He hadn’t so much lived these 33 years in a daydream as much as he felt that there’d always been a scrim between him and the world. Everything was seen and felt at a slight remove. His emotions and his thoughts always disengaged, unable to moor with what was real or intended in this world. He saw how others acted, and he didn’t feel that way. He heard what others said and never thought in that manner.

Learning that trepanning removed the filter between one’s perception of the world and a true experience of reality—moreover, filled one with a universal love—was all he needed to hear.

Lead me to the drill, he said.

Nothing in his short and concentrated life was quite the same again.

What I’m Reading:

“If I was insane, everything could be made to make sense. If I was sane, nothing could.”

— Tara Westover / Educated