How did I get here?

I’m sitting on a soft chenille couch in the unfamiliar living room that has become my home. My feet are perched on the hard edge of a coffee table (is this allowed?), dark wood scattered with tasteful stone coasters from some trip to Italy, painted with bruised pears and shiny peaches, their leaves and blossoms curling in an imaginary gust of wind.

The couch faces a wall of glass doors overlooking a steep slope. From a seated position, all I can see is branches.

My friend’s father emerges from his home office, where soft jazz fills the silence between conference calls, and begins to systematically open every window in the house. The scent of wet twigs, raw and musty, pours in with the cool early-summer morning air.

Four days ago, I was in an apartment in Berlin. Five days ago, I was in a suburban home with two cats and a wooden patio. Ten days ago, I was in the psych ward.

My family believes that I am running away. Not from anything specific — a city, a job, a relationship — but from myself, the self that emerges only in quiet moments, pushing me deep into my thoughts and my mattress, as though the elaborately painted set design of my life has collapsed, leaving only the scuffed metal scaffolding of loneliness behind.

They are right.

I am running away, and I know that any psychiatrist in the world would advise a long, intensive course of therapy. But my instincts — the same ones that encouraged my mental breakdown — are telling me I can find my own way out. Part of me truly believes this. Part of me is just curious what I will experience before I stop.

Until then, my writing will serve as an outlet for any literal and psychological adventures. Because the one thing that I have never regretted, out of all my self-destructive impulses, is the decision to be honest.