Mental Health I: Why Do I Write?

The first in a series of five essays about Mental Health to celebrate the dog days of August.

I’d been writing words and sentences since the first grade. As a person of engineering temperament, I expressed myself with logic and clarity (my specifications for concrete were top-notch). But I can pinpoint the specific date when I first tried to express the vagaries of my heart and soul. Summer 1996. Sitting at…