Which is sort of difficult because I'm smarter than she is. She has a screaming green Corvette and she pronounces the "s" in Illinois, but she knows how I should be when I fly there, and I have to admit that I don't.

She says, "If you don't get a job because you're scared, then you're avoiding your feelings." She says this as she wipes her eye. She keeps wiping her eye.

I tell her I want to stay home all day and clean my house and rearrange my garden, and then I say, "Would you like to rinse your eye out in the bathroom?"

She says I sound like I'm slipping back to the life I had when I was bulimic.

I tell her going to work is like being bulimic because instead of avoiding my feelings by focusing on food, I avoid my feelings by focusing on work.

She says I need to start coming twice a week. She says she's glad I have insurance. She says, "This is an example of something you could only have gotten from having a job."

Fuck her.

I say, "OK. How about Wednesday?"

On Monday, Mattel calls. Well, my friend from Mattel. I do not say that everyone I know is making fun of her for working on a site that promotes Barbie. I do not say that the only thing multimedia can do for Barbie is deconstruct her, and that was already done in the '80s. I go to an interview because now I have to report back to my therapist.

I try so hard in the interview that they may want to hire me, so I call my therapist for an emergency appointment. She says she's booked.

Fuck her. This is very important, and she is being very judgmental to think that it's OK for her to be booked. And how can I have a female therapist with a car that says, I wish I were a man? I call back to tell her that it's not just that I have to figure out if I want to take a job at Mattel. It's also that I'm suicidal.

I want to convey to her that my life blew up in my face because she wouldn't see me earlier.

Her eye is still bothering her and I hope it falls out of the socket while I'm talking so she realizes her problems are worse than mine. Maybe it would have to be both eyes: dangling by the optic nerve, if it's even that long, and there's blood dripping all over her professional outfit, and there's also eye stuff—optic fluid or brain lubricant or something—on her sensible shoes and her thick, squishy carpet.

She says, "...It doesn't seem like you're trying."