In the back of my mind, there’s a hole. I’ve noticed my thoughts disappear into it sometimes. I can’t observe it, of course, I can’t see where exactly this void is; but I’ve seen the ragged edges where it rips itself into the core of my soul.
Almost by definition, I don’t know when it started. This isn’t to say it’s always been with me, I know my thoughts used to be sound, used to be normal, used to be complete. But one day (I don’t remember when; that thought has been lost to the hole), I noticed it. I noticed that a thought I had been thinking was just gone. Its train of thought was not derailed, it had instead simply disappeared.
Within me, in somewhere the hole cannot reach, I know I cannot fix this. I know that my mind is, now and forever, broken. I will forever have to second-guess myself, forever have to assume that my thoughts are not fully my own.
It is a vast and undetectable pit in the middle of my own brain; if I’m not lucky, the rest of me might fall into it too.