I filled the space with walking and then with reading

I did not realise how much of my planning had been about this until it stopped. Entire structures in my week turned out to exist for a reason that had gone.

My version was gradual rather than sudden. Nothing dramatic, just a slow noticing over about two months that something had stopped.

I had never described it to anybody before this circle because I had assumed it was universal. Finding out it was not was a strange afternoon.

Mine returned partially when I reduced, which my prescriber had told me might happen, and knowing in advance made it much less alarming.

Well said, and thank you for taking the time over it.

I noticed it first in the supermarket, of all places, standing in an aisle that had always been difficult and finding it was simply an aisle.

Mine went quiet within about ten days and I did not trust it for months. I kept waiting for it to come back and prove the whole thing had been my imagination.

The space it left was uncomfortable at first. I had a great deal of attention suddenly free and no idea what to do with it.

The hardest conversation I had was explaining to somebody who has never had it what it was like to have it. There is no good analogy.

Something I did not expect: I was less irritable within a fortnight, and I now think a good deal of my irritability had been the constant background negotiation.

I have found the quiet made some things harder rather than easier. Boredom, mainly, which I had apparently not experienced in decades.

What surprised me most was how ordinary I felt. Not better exactly. Ordinary, in a way I had assumed was simply not available to me.

Mine is quieter on some days than others and correlates strongly with sleep, which took me about a year of notes to see.