I was in constant negotiation with what I’d always assumed was laziness, a moral failing, and my remedy was an obsession with systems. I needed discipline, routines; those would be key if I wanted to deserve this dream job, if I didn’t want to squander the opportunity. I cycled through the most extreme versions of hope and disappointment, hinging

I am fundamentally more concerned with truth than fact.

Twenty years I’d spent wondering. How long can a person think about killing herself before she finally does it?

think it could be an exciting opportunity for you to practice managing discomfort,

Rather than concluding that the metrics were flawed, I decided they weren’t enough.

Of course I was out of danger. Killing myself, in my fantasies, had most often served a singular purpose: announcing and solidifying my badness, my uselessness, my weakness against the voice—my voice, but different—telling me daily to do it. Admitting to wanting to kill myself accomplished the same goal, and I could tell because the voice was gone.

I have one good, productive day and it wears me down, perhaps because of the futility of it. Perhaps because I’m certain routine & organization is the key to steadiness & ease & then I do it & the result is a sort of emptiness. What am I missing? (Trust the process.)

He wasn’t convinced, and he remained unconvinced when a new nurse arrived to take my vitals and informed us that once I was admitted—which I currently was—it didn’t matter that I’d checked myself in; by doing so, I’d given up the right to check myself out. Barring legal action, I wouldn’t be released until my doctor was confident that I was no

She suspects she doesn’t want to write so much as she wants “to have written.”