This morning, as I was drinking a cup of coffee, a day after my 43rd birthday, I felt a convulsive scattering across the roof of my mouth.

I choked. And spit.

I looked down and saw the bug lying upside down in the light brown liquid, its legs kicking profusely.

I stared at it.

I knew what it was. And I knew where it came from.

My brain.

The bugs had been with me for as long as I could remember. They are part of my life.  I don’t like it, they just are.

At first I was afraid of them. Disgusted.  I could feel them crawling over the surface of my hippocampus and through the channels of my amygdala.

I used to scratch my forehead incessantly because I could feel something crawling under my skin,  beneath my skull. Like something had burrowed into my nasal passages at night and…