(The following passage is an excerpt from Andy Nowicki's latest book Notes Before Death: Three Essays, now available on Amazon.com in paperback and on Kindle.)
As has been
extensively recorded elsewhere, things turned sour for me at roughly the time
of my initiation into puberty. It was at this juncture that I came to recognize
that my previous impression of being at ease in the world had perhaps always
been mistaken. Indeed, having become self-aware, I now saw that my very
presence, when I dwelt with others, seemed to have the effect of making those
others uncomfortable. Increasingly, in fact, the distressing notion came over
me that people would be much more at ease with one another if I weren’t around
to muck up the works. My existence in itself seemed to be an inconvenience
which caused them irritation and annoyance.
