I used to be more okay.

Before I was whatever I am now, I was somebody else.

I had bad days when all I wanted to do was eat until I burst in front of the television. Sobbing, screaming, scary days. And days when I would do anything to be seen. Days when I dangled myself in the peripheral vision of people who did not want me like a pine tree car freshener. But I felt better, more often.

I'm sicker now, and I may be getting sickerer. And for the rest of my life I may only have to look forward to getting sickererer.

A cab driver dropped me off at my psychiatrist's office. I hadn't spoken to anybody I cared about in three days. I hadn't been outside in three days. On my walk from the hospital to the cab I was afraid they would change their minds about letting me go and come after me and drag me back inside, into the cold and bleach and thin blankets.

But I got into the cab, and the driver drove, and he said some weird things about women and the devil that made me uncomfortable, while I smiled, dazed, drinking the warm sunshine that was spilling into the car window, savoring the smell of gasoline and hot vinyl, hugging my single plastic bag of dirty pajamas and hospital-issued toiletries that said INPATIENT in big black letters. The bag had a drawstring. I was allowed to have a drawstring now, but I was still worried about being seen with it.

I met my psychiatrist. Or rather, he met me. I'd already seen him in the ward where I was on lockdown for 24 hours, seeing another patient. I mentioned this. He didn't remember me.

Let me start by assuring you how OK I am.

I am not musing about perching on a sidewalk and casually leaning forward until my soft gooey body is in the path of a Mets bus.

I am not spending wide-eyed nights swaddled in a quilt and also inside a backpacking tent that has been raised on top of my bed so I can simulate a womb.

I am not groaning, moaning, twisting my limbs together and mashing my face into the couch cushions every time I remember the things that I have verbally promised to do and the contracts I have signed and the agreements I have entered and the nothing nothing nothing I have done.

I have been thinking about shaving my head. The notion first occurred to me when I was brushing my teeth and my eyes slid onto my reflection in the mirror. There was so much wiry brown, almost black, hair, whirling and twisting and jutting into the space surrounding my head. I felt sick. Like a crown of thorns, the hair was digging into my scalp and compacting my thoughts and feelings underneath, into a space that was too tight, that was about to burst.

My eyes watered. I knew I was going to scream unless I acted. I grabbed sharp scissors from my bathroom cabinet and sheared generous chunks of hair, from the back, from the side, from wherever. Damn the consequences. I needed to be free, to be clean.

The little brown black wires worked their way beneath the neck of my t-shirt, onto my sweaty skin, and they itched and stung. I removed my shirt and made a cursory effort to brush them off. I went to bed. I slept, beautifully. "Fuck," I said as I woke to my alarm.

So, I have been thinking about shaving my head.