=Lost: a mini-essay=

Damaged? Of course I'm damaged! I'm like a ship with a faulty navigation system, constantly tacking thirty degrees to port or starboard, I can't even tell which. I have to constantly make corrections that feel wrong or I'll never stay even close to on-course. I can't believe what I see with my own eyes or what I hear with my own ears. To live in the world that everyone else perceives as "real" I must live in a realm of abstract calculations that have no flesh-and-blood reality to me at all. It's an unsatisfying, "mathematical" way to exist. But then, looking around me at the behavior of others, I realize that everyone else is damaged, too. The only difference between them and me is the degree of damage. That and the fact that they never so much as suspect their navigation is off. Maybe it's only off by five or ten degrees, but they never make a correction. They sail on blithely, mad and crippled, completely sure of themselves and their direction, only to one day end up adrift and bitterly wondering why they never managed to get where they were going, having followed, as they believe right to the very end, the charts and commandments with a fanaticism that would have done old Captain Ahab proud.