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My life is governed by numbers.

I go up to 123.0. I swing down to 117.2. 35 calories in one-third cup of sugar snap peas. 190 calories in two tablespoons of peanut butter. 28 hours with no food. 2 small pieces of a flatbread pizza with friends. 3 beers to keep smiling. 4 hours of sleep. 20 more hours of no food.

23 days until the first day of Fall.

26 days until I see my mother.

It's not enough.

Those three words keep running through my head. They're there when I wake up. They're there when I lay down at night. At my desk. In the car. Out with friends. I don't know what they mean. Or maybe I'm afraid to look too close.

For a while the numbers helped. They were a focal point, a goal. Now they're just another weapon my brain uses against me.

12:01 a.m. and it's officially the last day of August. I am clinging to these days, and they are slipping through my fingers like sand.

"It's almost Fall!" My friend sighs happily. "Aren't you excited?"

I can't even force a smile. "Fall is more bitter than sweet to me." I say in a startling show of something like honesty.

"Why?" She asks curiously.

I shrug like it doesn't matter. "Winter comes next."

Here I will be honest and tell you that I am genuinely afraid of facing this Winter. I feel completely unarmed. Helpless. Do you know what it feels like to feel helpless against yourself? To feel trapped in your own head with no way out? To not even be sure if you want to get out?

To my friends, Fall is pumpkin lattes and cozy scarves and hot soup and bonfires and crunchy leaves and crisp fresh air.

I want to love Fall. I really do. But to me, Fall is dread creeping up my spine. It's a slow descent as the evenings grow darker. And you would think I would be used to it by now, but it somehow always sneaks up on me. Somehow I always forget how everything gets even heavier in the dark.

I can already feel myself slipping, but something feels off this year. It's like I've gone too far too fast. It's like I'm getting too close to the edge.

I noticed it first a week ago when I realized that talking has been growing increasingly difficult. I am on autopilot, vacant. I try to show some interest when people talk to me, but I can't hold conversations very well. I get lost halfway through. Today just the sound of people talking was so irritating that I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I know my boss has noticed, and I try. I try so hard to be bright and cheerful, but it's exhausting. Chatty clients linger. I try to rearrange my face into the appropriate expressions. Please just leave. Please just go away. Please stop talking to me. Please just leave me alone. By the time I get home, I have just enough energy to wander my house like a silent ghost, trying to lose myself in books or writing. The Mr. looks at me with worry growing in the crease between his eyes.

"You mean the world to me." He whispers in the dark. "You know that right? You mean everything to me."

I do. I do know that. It should be enough, shouldn't it? Why isn't it enough?