I am unable to type the words that need to be expunged from my brain. There's so many things - thoughts and ideas and voices - and they need to come out. Restless. That's what they call it; the therapists, the doctors and my parents. "You're just restless," they say. "Relax. Read a book. Take a nap," they advise. But they don't know that I can't relax, that I can't just nap. Because napping is rest and my brain does not rest. It continues thinking and pondering and worrying and calculating and wondering. It doesn't end until 4 a.m. when my eyes, bloodshot with exhaustion, close and my brain is forced to power off.

It's not a disease. It's not a disorder. It's not something that can be diagnosed and cured or even suppressed by a pill. It's who I am; they way I have always been and always will be. I don't loathe it because I can't change it. Sure, there are some things that help me relax - the soothing touch of my mother, the warm embrace of a friend, the wag of my dog's tail - but it always returns. The thinking and pondering and worrying and calculating and wondering; it may go on vacation, but its permanent residence is inside my brain.

Don't pity me. Please. That's the last thing I want. But I need you to recognize that it's there. That the thinking and pondering and worrying and calculating and wondering, it does not stop. Even when I'm at my best or when you perceive I'm at my best, it is still there.

The thoughts and ideas and voices are both negative and positive, not one or the other. They are kind and demeaning and ugly and funny and loving and angry and boisterous and, most of all, they're never ending. Know that I am not giving up or giving in to the constant churn of thoughts. Sometimes I feel like I am being held captive in my own body, but I am the captain of this ship. I will not sink. I will not crash. I will listen; listen with all my might to every word and idea that my brain fathoms because for ever one million thoughts I know that one will mean something. The shame, the self-hatred, the negativity - they are there and they are heard. But they can not stay. They are tossed overboard because this ship is mine.