Stress is impossible. All neurons are focused at the forepart of the brain, pressing against the forehead, weighing down the skull. But it's not stressful, or even entirely unpleasant. It's warm in here, but the warmth is, like the headache, merely tolerated. Machines make their noises, I have assignments, I answer the phones, it is all going by as if I am sitting on a train and watching it. My actions are reflections in the window, shining back at me, always from an angle that necessarily strikes the familiar as alien.

But there is no stress. Somehow, it is all palatable. The phone rings and I answer it, although my boss is in front of me. No stress. The call is from a collection agency, they want five grand that I don't have. No stress.

Everything seems very deliberate. Every minute has its duration, every action has its gestures, every motion has a purpose or at least a reason. The world is opaque, it solidifies. The gray areas slip into more contrasting darks and lights. I like my job, I love my boyfriend, I am making all the right decisions. It is easy to swallow these things now. Or, they have always been in the pit of my stomach and I've heaped so much else atop it that I could never taste them. But these are the truths, the fixtures, the brick in the bathtub conserving water - put there long ago, serving a good purpose, reasons why forgotten in the midst of aesthetic recontemplation.

All is right. I am settled, congealed, drying, setting - and it is not a reason to fear anything, because within my settling is the easy acceptance of the knowledge that it's all a fallacy. Everything you could say about life, your own life, can be (and probably will be) proven wrong, by yourself, before you die. It's fine, though. It's all okay. Don't panic. No stress.

I am not writing this to calm myself down, I am merely astonished at my own calm and wish to record it.