I consider myself a law-abiding person. But I'm exhausted. I don't know where to put the bottles, newspapers, cans, and other stuff for garbage pickup outside my house. The rules are so thick you need someone from M.I.T. to explain them.

I consider myself a law-abiding person. But I'm exhausted. I don't know where to put the bottles, newspapers, cans, and other stuff for garbage pickup outside my house. The rules are so thick you need someone from M.I.T. to explain them.

They're not going around foraging in garbage cans and things like that.

They even stole the damn garbage cans.

Americans who have parents raised during the Great Depression or World War II understand how drastically things have changed on the home front. My father did not care a whit whether I liked him, and it would have been unthinkable for him to pick up my stuff. There were rules in the house, and they were enforced.

I want to explain how exhausted I am. Even in my dreams. How I wake up tired. How I’m being drowned by some kind of black wave.