“I narrowed my life to nothing but survival and sleep, becoming a very efficient creature. I no longer did things for pleasure, so I required no excess light or water. I did not read or soak in bubble baths—in fact, I washed myself simply by squatting in the bathtub in front of the faucet, not even putting the plug in the drain. Comfort was too much trouble, as was standing up in the shower. I needed little energy, and as such, little food. That winter I simply waited to disappear.

Lying sleepless for hours on end beneath a pile of blankets and discarded clothes—too exhausting to put them on hangers, to figure out if they were dirty or clean; once a week I shoved the whole mass into the washer and threw them back on the bed when they were dry—I pretended I was a prisoner, doing time in my own head. I remembered a story we’d read at Governor’s School, Ursula Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, in which the happiness of a utopian city is dependent upon one forgotten child suffering in a basement, a sacrificial victim. I pretended I was performing a meritorious act, as opposed to simply giving in to depression without a fight. I longed for uninterrupted sleep, but it never came—I catnapped like a prisoner constantly afraid of sudden attack.”

— Stacy Pershall, from “Loud in the House of Myself.”