The Year Before I Became Sick

From February to May of 2018, I felt profoundly unmoored. Some days, having a cigarette and a cup of coffee from the bodega was the only thing that could cheer me up. A wrong look or word was an invitation to spar. It was as if the weight of every unsaid thing and every unaddressed slight had built up in my body and was being released in one intense burst. "I'm typically a mild man or person who slowed anger, patient to a fault, a pushover even," he says.