this is how we do it.

Here is how it goes: I expose my flaws to her, and she takes notes.

Fix me, I want to say. I want to pour myself out over her desk like spilled milk. Put me back in the glass; take away all the detritus. Fix me.

Instead I talk of events, sketching out in an hour the broad strokes of my life. Parents. Siblings. Fire. Boyfriends. School. Work.

I am complicated, I want to scream, so complicated. You cannot understand me. But I fear that's not true. I feel simple. I am the mere sum of indifference and angst. Subtract motivation and healthy emotions, and voila. Me.

The therapist tells me that she rarely sees people more than once a week. I want to tell her that I am severely broken and she must see me every day, but I do not. I say nothing, because I fear that if I am not good then she will—maybe— not see me at all.

I want to say, look, do you see. I have put on makeup, and taken a shower, and combed my hair. I am dressed, in clean clothes, and I am even wearing a funny, meta-referential shirt. Do you see? I am more than my depression. I want to say this because I think perhaps that I am less, much less.

Sometimes I wish I had a physical cancer instead of this mental one. That there were treatments—radiation, chemotherapy, surgery—instead of panaceas of therapy and antidepressants. I wish that I would either get better or die. I am tired of this almost life.