Break it down.

I am endlessly fascinated by the most random of things. Like a baby hypnotized by a set of dangling car keys, I seem to be mesmerized by odd and often overlooked occurrences. Last summer, when visiting the Berlin Wall, I spent most of my time watching a brown shaggy dog sit at the foot of his owner on a park bench. I am known to do such things. I have eaten at five star restaurants and my only opinion walking away is not one of the food or the service, but of the lighting in the restroom. Once, while at a party packed full of beautiful gay men, me and a friend of mine with a similar take on life were spotted in the corner under the spell of a particularly interesting aluminum garbage can.

Maybe it's the writer in me that draws me to the details. Maybe, as a therapist once told me, it's the self-conscious feeling that I belong on the side lines, so I can't help but notice the smaller things off in the distance. Maybe (and this is the more probable reason) I am simply not as smart as I think I am and as a simpleton I gravitate towards the miniscule things that no one else sees, like empty cardboard boxes, matches, or a particularly overweight cat.

A very recent fascination of mine is one that exists all around us, but only those with an eye for things happening under the radar will notice it. It's that of the breakdown, the mental collapse of a perfectly sane individual right out in the open. It's happening all around us, but unless you've got the eye to spot one, the odds are stacked against you that you won't even notice it. Like a skilled hunter who can spot a quail a hundred yards away, I see them all around me. They happen in the cars next to us in traffic, in airport bathrooms, and in elevators. People momentarily lose their sh*t in public all the time.

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine over instant messaging. We were both at work, unproductively chatting the morning away as we often do, when he confessed to me that he had cried that morning on the train. Dealing with a lot in his personal life, I wasn't surprised that everything had finally come to fruition. But I was fascinated that it happened when it did, in front of God and everybody, during rush hour on the Red Line heading downtown. And last week, another friend of mine and I were also instant messaging during work hours, when she broke down. We had been analyzing a very distant crush of hers, your atypical aloof twenty something single straight guy, when she compared him to her habit of cigarette smoking. "I know he's bad for me," she typed, "but I don't know how to stop." After I drew further comparisons from the analogy, that the guy was something she does out of boredom and that he was something she knew she did now but would not be doing her entire life, she let me know that she was now sitting at work in tears. And again, I was drawn to that moment when otherwise normal adults allow their emotions to collapse on top of them, leaving them a crumpled pathetic heap in the fetal position on the floor.

I am the master of the breakdown. Once in college, I had to get up and leave a class because, as the teacher rambled on about Literary Theory, my thoughts roamed far off towards something apparently upsetting, and the next thing I knew tears were running down my face. What felt like the end of the world to me went unnoticed. I returned to class with no one the wiser that I had just openly wept in front of a room full of strangers. Breakdowns were part of my daily routine when I first moved to Chicago. I didn't know a soul, was dirt poor, and I perpetually entertained the idea that the boy who had broken my heart back home in Memphis, the one I had moved to Chicago to get away from, would show up outside my door begging me to come back. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and the breakdowns were sneaky and quick, like a cobra, and I'd find myself in line at the grocery store, or in a bar, when the overpowering need to cry would wash over me.

When one sweeps down on top of you, it may feel as if the entire world is watching you. But the public breakdown is not often noticed in the shadow of bigger things going on around it. As one sweeps down on top of you, it may feel as if the entire world is judging you, but odds are that something else is going on around you that is holding everyone's attention, like the Berlin Wall. But someone like me will notice, partly because I pay unnecessary attention to even the slightest points of interest, but probably mostly because I am certifiably crazy. When I see people in public fighting back their tears (and believe me, they are everywhere), I find myself pulled into what I think might be their situation. Is it that their heart is broken? Are they scared? Or did they wake up that morning to the cold reality that life for them would never be more than it was that day, or the day before?

The devil's in the details. And the reasons why we are who we are lie in the fine print. Nothing is what it seems to be. There's always more underneath the surface. So don't feel ashamed or weak if the weight of your problems finally knocks you down and you just so happen to be in public. Trust me. You won't be the first person to do it, and you certainly won't be the last. And the odds are that no one will even notice. Except maybe me...