Non compos mentis commandments

Do not think. Do. Thinking is self-indulgence you cannot afford. Doing will keep your mind elsewhere and away from the gathering dark.

Paint your toenails pink. The lightest, shiniest pink you can find.

Plant flowers. Dig your fingers into the earth. Feel the sun beat your neck raw. Let the day escape you.

Keep your head down. Steady as she goes, captain, steady as she goes.

Walk, and keep walking. Walk, though there is nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Locomotion means life, stasis signals death. Do not stop for death, Miss Dickinson.

Write it down though you feel your voice waning, your sense of self escaping you, your fingers -- much like your poor brain -- stiff and cramping. Make concrete whatever you can, and make language a lens by which to see what is real in this thick fog of boggling nonsense.

Sing in the shower. Or cry. Or, better still, do both.

It's true that no one can truly know another's pain. Do not expect others to understand, but do not allow yourself to rest in that separateness either.

At her bedtime, tickle your daughter so that she laughs her truest laugh -- a laugh of pure abandon stripped wholly of self-consciousness, glowing warm with joy. This and perhaps this alone will hold at bay the monsters beginning to surround you, their claws softly drumming your windows in the fading light.