Chapter 4
90s – Start of the Nightmarish Descent
“The lunatic is in my head
The lunatic is in my head
You raise the blade
You make the change
You rearrange me ’til I’m sane
You lock the door
And throw away the key
There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me” – Brain Damage, Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
The first chill of autumn was biting hard at Killington, Vermont, a stark contrast to the lukewarm shame that settled in my gut. 1990. The decade stretched before me, a blank canvas I was already splattering with my brand of self-destruction. I was working at the ski resort, a faceless cog in a machine designed to extract money from vacationing flatlanders. My job was insignificant, but my hunger, both literal and metaphorical, was not.
I was caught stealing food. Not a heroic larceny born of desperation but a pathetic act fueled by a craving I couldn’t articulate. It was the taste of something forbidden, something that filled not just my stomach, but a deeper, emptier space inside. That space, I was beginning to...
