Rte 180 between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon

My ghost like to travel. Traveling alone, is that weird? I think most people like to vacation or take road trips with other people. Me, I'm solitary. I really should be more social in my solo travels, strike up conversations whenever possible. I've missed a few opportunities already. I'm just not good at it.

I fantasize about striking up a conversation with a stranger, and being tempted to tell them that I'm unemployed and I'm just traveling because, well, I'm dying. I have until about August. Holy shit, why? how? what are you dying of? I have a mental illness. How do you die of a mental illness? It's something I've had for a while, never got it treated, and I'm gonna kill myself in August. It's just fact now. It's untreatable. It's like cancer, if you don't get it treated, you die. Same basic idea, just a lot more complicated because it's dealing with something as squishy as the mind.

Cancer spreads and at some point it can't be stopped. If I had cancer, I probably would have died a long time ago. With this mental illness, it took a lot longer. And I mean a lot longer. I could take drugs like I could undergo chemo, but both do the same basic thing, they block an underlying truth.

With chemo you're blocking the consumption of whatever organ is being attacked by the cancer. With drugs, I'd be blocking the underlying truth that I don't want to be here anymore in the profoundest sense.

To a certain extent chemo works. Likewise, to a certain extent drugs work. I've bypassed that extent, and taking drugs now would just be a cynical and cruel betrayal of my core reality. Sounds crazy? It should, well it's an illness. At this point, people telling me to get help, to get it treated, they already missed the point.

I'd be asking someone to take a leap of faith, putting mental illness in the same light as tumors, leukemia, and cancer. With mental illness, people have this prejudice that on some level, what you do is your choice. People have this prejudice that treatment for mental illness is effective. If you get treatment, you will get through it. No.