I got my first dose of Dolly Parton’s Little Miracle this week. I have to admit that it was strange. I spent more time in the gym of the Thomas Menino YMCA in Hyde Park than I spent anywhere else in a year. I was just out there in the world with other humans. I didn’t know how to move in their company. When the woman checking me in asked for my license, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I walked in a narrow shaft of perception, my space in the world extending only millimeters from my skin. I stepped carefully, as on a ledge above the sea. I made it to the injection station and it felt as though I had merely survived the walk from the check-in table.

Read the rest of Charlie Pierce’s column at Esquire Politics