PART ONEHe wasn’t sick. He wasn’t mentally ill, or crazy, or insane. Granted, he was diagnosed as Bipolar Type II ten years ago at age eighteen, but it wasn’t a label he gave any mind to. Sometimes he wondered if he was sick, but then as he would listen to the idiots at work or on the bus ride home, he realized just how sane he was in comparison. As he heard people yammering on about nothing in particular, he’d realize more and more, as the bus ride felt longer and longer, that he was far from mentally ill. He was perfectly sane. He was at least on the saner side of the spectrum.He listened too much, he thought. Other people--in maintaining appropriate levels of sanity--listened less to the words that came from the mouths of the masses. If one listened to every word that was spoken by the majority of the people on the planet, one’s head would certainly explode with madness. Micah’s did, or it felt like it had. Little explosions in his mind, blowing up chunks of brain matter as he listened to his boss at the restaurant talk about how liberals are driving up food cost; how vegetarians are going to destroy his profit margins.Yes, Micah was depressed, and perhaps in a clinical sense. Frankly, he was depressed because he didn’t get along with the world socially. It was so hard for him to relate to literally anyone, be they young or old, black or white, smart or stupid. Of course, stupid people had their own stupid opinions, usually about politics and other areas of life where stupidity breeds and thrives, but sometimes the smart ones were even worse than the stupid ones because they just ought to know better than to sound so dumb. And yes, this did in fact make him depressed.Micah doesn't know what his new life will look like, but he's ready to see. Micah is finally ready to find it.
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