All the Things We Never Knew Read Online Free PDF Page A

love eggs for dinner,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
    â€œSo are you,” he replied, setting the tray down beside me. It was the first overtly affectionate thing David had ever said to me. He was not loose with his words. He touched my arm, and a current moved through me. He watched me without flinching. I wished I hadn’t just finished a sweaty bike ride.
    â€œI’ve never heard you say anything like that before.”
    â€œYeah,” David said, poking his eggs with a piece of the toast. “I’m not much of a romantic.”
    I started to disagree but then thought better of it. He wasn’t a romantic in the way that other men were, offering trips or jewelry as a showing of their affection. But he was completely authentic. David was his own person, and he appreciated me and my ambition. He wasn’t the richest man in the world, or the CEO of a major corporation. He told me he hadn’t bothered to finish his college education in Montreal, a fact that would later make much more sense. But despite the lack of a degree, he was by far the most intelligent and sensitive man I’d ever met, and the most mysterious. I had the uncanny sense that I already knew him, though, and that his serious, contemplative side could be very good for me.
    I leaned over to kiss him. He did not rush me, or hurry me. His lips were full, a sweetheart shape that met my own naturally. I was ready to put down roots with someone. This tender gardener had won me over.
    We spent most of our weekends together after that: hiking, skiing, mountain biking. Finally, I was with someone who loved the outdoors as much as I did. We traveled whenever we could both get away. We spent many of our summer weekends in the gulches, arches, and peaks of Canyonlands, hiking and bouldering, then cooling off in the local rivers and lakes. The red rock was millions of yearsold, as grand as any setting I’d ever known. I wanted David to love it as much as I did, and from the smile that settled on his face in the desert, I could tell he was enthralled.
    One night in Capitol Reef National Park—three hours from my childhood home near Salt Lake City—we stayed up to watch a particularly active lightning storm. The strikes could have been miles away, but every time one hit the ground, it electrified the room with bright light and an energy that spooked me. The house where we stayed was owned by a college friend, a geologist who had bought land in the Torrey area before it became unaffordable.
    Just as the sky thickened with dark, brooding storm clouds, David threw a jacket over me and said, “Come on, we can’t miss this!”
    We both ran barefoot into the storm, a wild, chaotic wind and rain that drenched us in minutes. He drew me in close, held out his left arm, and snapped a photograph of us while the dawn broke and a bolt streaked the sky behind us. Our eyes still held the excitement of those strikes, living so close to something so beautiful. And so dangerous.
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    EARLY TREATMENT

    The National Institute of Mental Health reports that “unlike most disabling physical diseases, mental illness begins very early in life. Half of all lifetime cases begin by age fourteen; three-quarters have begun by age twenty-four. Thus, mental disorders are really the chronic diseases of the young. For example, anxiety disorders often begin in late childhood, mood disorders in late adolescence, and substance abuse in the early twenties. Unlike heart disease or most cancers, young people with mental disorders suffer disability when they are in the prime of life, when they would normally be the most productive.”
    The study quoted above found that in the United States, mental disorders are quite common: 26 percent of the general population reported that they had had symptoms sufficient for diagnosing a mental disorder during the past twelve months. However, many of these cases are mild or will resolve without formal