To be Crazy is to be Coincidence-Intolerant

This is what a panic attack feels like; I zoom up to a moment in time, a moment that is frozen. I can’t breathe. My chest seems to be palpitating. I take a step and my legs are filled with viscous water, weighing them down, plunging them into the ground—I’m unable to lift them up to take another step, and when I finally do, I double over and fall to the ground as though my legs are made of lead. My lungs seem to be overtaken by an invisible, clutching hand. My hands and legs begin to tingle and sweat. I shake an arm that becomes more numb the more I shake it.

To be crazy is to be coincidence-intolerant. You find coincidences in your life. At first they become almost exhilarating--how everything about them connects--and then these coincidences begin to irk you. A name repeated in an unfamiliar place, a conversation outside you that applies to you--everything becomes connected. Everything makes too much sense. That is what it feels like to be crazy--instead of being too confusing, everything simply makes too much sense, and it comes crashing together like a cymbal with a sound that is too loud to handle. Everything makes sense to you--unfortunately it makes sense to no one else. And you become dangerous when you begin to speak.