I was eighteen, in the throes of a nervous breakdown, when I checked myself in to my grandparents’ house in the Berkshires. I had recently graduated with flying colors from Phillips Academy Andover, but suddenly I was having trouble doing the simplest things: walking, talking, reading a menu, dialing a phone. The world appeared as if in a fog. I couldn’t see straight; I could barely hear. Other people loomed as shadowy figures through the mist, approaching or retreating, nearly always threatening.
It started in the months after graduation. I had decided to take the year off before college and travel. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, and in my mind I was beginning my apprenticeship. I would read and write, explore the world, work at whatever…
