7:26PM: swept and mopped. thought i wouldn’t be able to do it without eating phenethylamine or an opiate. opiates will make me more tired. don’t want to eat adderall. imagined trying therapy again. would be a struggle to leave apartment. then the talking, explaining context. i’d be smiling like the last time i tried it because i’m always smiling because things don’t want to hurt you as much if you’re smiling. it would take forever. i would be a smiling idiot for like four months, saying ‘well, you know, i guess it’s just a slump.’ imagine not doing that, like going in, allowing my face to be like it is now with no muscles tensed, shaking therapist’s hand, saying ‘i’m going to try something different. i’m going to try not smiling or bullshitting with you at all. i have not done this before.’ then six months or something later when i’m…i don’t know…when it’s not like this, the therapist would say ‘i knew it, i knew from the minute you said you didn’t want to bullshit me: this one would not be like the other hopeless cases. congratulations, you’ve made it to the other side.’ she would hang a photo of us in her waiting room. in the photo our arms would wrap behind each other’s shoulders with the casual, natural interdependence of two people steadying their balance after running a marathon. the other therapists would have initially mixed feelings about the photo, but pretty soon similar photos of themselves with patients would cover an entire waiting room wall, under a banner of cut-out letters spelling ‘greetings from the other side!’ between stacks of magazines on a nearby table where there would be a little upright plastic apparatus proffering free ‘tickets to the other side: simple time management strategies for jumpstarting your progress in therapy’ pamphlets, that would open to a page with the heading ‘1. STOP SMILING, YOU’RE NOT OKAY!’ opposite a page with the heading ‘2. SAVING THE BULLSHIT FOR THE OTHER 23 HOURS OF THE DAY,’ and thoughtful tips under both. my therapist would keep a framed copy of our photo on her desk, to remind her of the success story that started it all. the picture was taken right after we finished the first draft of the pamphlet.