Does anybody else...

Does anybody else feel like they’re disappearing? I feel it all the time. I feel like I’m folding into myself, like one of those paper fortune teller games kids make. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t. Days go by where I don’t to speak to anybody other than my wife. We moved to Europe for six months. It’s gorgeous. I know almost nobody. I don’t mind. Before we left for Europe I fell into a deep depression, one of the worst depressive spells I’d ever had – maybe the worse. Couldn’t eat or sleep. This went on for about a month. Then it lifted and my appetite came back and, eventually, I started sleeping regular hours again. The sleep was the last thing to return. It’s been good. But there’s still something wrong and I can’t figure out what. Sort of like when a tooth hurts but you’re not sure which one. Does anybody else feel like that?

Part of me never wants to go back home. When I see what passes for my country these days, it seems better to stay away. But I miss my kids, who are in college. I miss my dogs, but not that much. I miss playing the piano (I am terrible at playing the piano.) I don’t miss guns and I don’t miss the American temper and I don’t miss artificial colors and artificial flavors, and the larger artifice of American life. At night I browse online listings for houses in Italy, France, Spain. I think, “It would be better to just stay here.” To disappear here. Or maybe I’m just afraid to return to the person I left behind. Does anybody else feel like moving is the answer? I write things: jokes, mostly. I wrote an idea for a TV show and the response I got was that it wasn’t funny enough. It wasn’t supposed to be funny. AI is going to do everything better than we can do it, so maybe it’s time to learn plumbing. Robots can’t fix leaky pipes yet. Then again, I don’t care if I get replaced by an algorithm. Sometimes I feel like I already have. Does anybody else feel like that?