Free The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

went back to Paris, met some more friends there, had a grand old time, and then went to Vienna, a city I’d always wanted to visit. I could not sleep in Vienna. I arrived, checked into a pension, and met some old friends who were also in Vienna. We made plans to travel together to Budapest. We had a congenial evening out and then I came back and stayed awake all night, terrified of some mistake I thought I’d made, though I didn’t know what it was. The next day, I was too edgy to try breakfast in a room full of strangers, but when I went outside, I felt better and decided to see some art and thought I had probably just been overextending myself. My friends had to have dinner with someone else, and when they told me that, I felt stricken to the core, as though I had been told about a murder plot. They agreed to meet me for a drink after dinner. I did not eat dinner. I simply couldn’t go into a strange restaurant and order alone (though I had done this many times before); nor could I strike up a conversation with anyone. When I finally met my friends, I was shaking. We went out and I drank much more than I ever drink, and I felt temporarily calm. That night, I stayed awake all night again with a splitting headache and a churning stomach, worrying obsessively about the boat schedule to Budapest. The next day I got through, and during the third night of not sleeping, I was so frightened that I was unable to get up to use the bathroom all night. I called my parents. “I need to come home,” I said. They sounded more than a bit surprised, since before this trip I had negotiated every extra day and location, trying to extend my time abroad as much as I could. “Is anything wrong?” they asked, and I could only say that I didn’t feel well and that it had all turned out to be less exciting than I had anticipated. My mother was sympathetic. “Traveling alone can be hard,” she said. “I thought you were meeting friends there, but even so, it can be awfully tiring.” My father said, “If you want to come home, go charge a ticket to my card and come home.”
    I bought the ticket, packed my bags, and came home that afternoon. My parents met me at the airport. “What happened?” they asked, but I could only say that I couldn’t stay there anymore. In their hugs, I felt safe for the first time in weeks. I sobbed with relief. When we got back to the apartment where I’d grown up, I was depressed and felt completely stupid. I had blown my big travel summer; I had come back to New York, where I had nothing to do except old chores. I had never seen Budapest. I called a few friends, who were surprised to hear from me. I didn’t even try to explain what had happened. I spent the rest of the summer living at home. I was bored, annoyed, and rather sullen, though we did have some good times together.
    I more or less forgot about all that in the years that followed. After that summer, I went to graduate school in England. Starting at a new university in a new country, I hardly panicked at all. I settled right into the new way of life, made friends quickly, did well academically. I loved England, and nothing seemed to frighten me any longer. The anxious self that had gone off to college in America had given way to this robust, confident, easygoing fellow. When I had a party, everyone wanted to come. My closest friends (who are still among my closest friends) were people with whom I sat up all night, in a deep and rapid intimacy that was fantastically pleasurable. I called home once a week, and my parents observed that I sounded as happy as they’d ever heard me. I craved company whenever I was feeling unsettled, and I found it. For two years, I was happy most of the time, and unhappy only about bad weather, the difficulty of making everyone love me instantly, not having enough sleep, and beginning to lose my hair. The only depressive tendency that was always present in me was nostalgia: unlike Edith Piaf, I regret everything just