On Friday, I was alone all day and my mouth tasted wrong and my heartbeat kept changing meters and everything hurt. The world got so small and dark that every time I looked in the mirror it floated in front of my eye and disguised itself as one of my pupils.

I ate seven satsuma oranges. I forced myself not to count how many segments each one had by my mouth counted for me. I tried to peel off the orange skin in one piece and I gambled on it. If it came off in one piece, I would live. If it ripped while I was peeling, I would die.

I’m supposed to like the cold and I’m supposed to like being alone and I’m supposed to feel immortal. Chemicals were the only tangible reason why all these nice things were making me feel so unsafe, all the oranges and the dead leaves outside and the way the hum of all the electronics together sounded like something slithering.

I got out my guitar because my callouses had gone away so playing it would hurt. I sang a song to the picture of me that was hanging on the wall above the fire place. The song was in first person and I started hating it because the lyrics kept saying “I” but I had never found comfort from loneliness in a whorehouse but the song made it sound like I was saying I had.

In that picture of me above the fire place they made my skin look perfect and my face looked intelligently bored. I felt old and sick while I sang to my picture because I was jealous of how in that picture I didn’t feel like I was dying. In that picture I was thinking about Smith College and how I was excited for the cold and the dead leaves to come.

I counted some good things: I can see, I can hurt, I can worry so therefore I am alive. We have a president who is a good man. My dog’s ears are soft. The mail came. My dad made a little cat nest with the bed blankets for my cat. My mother is alive and coming home.

I counted some bad things: my house is painted ugly colors. The world is supposed to end in twenty days. The hallway is dark. My dad will turn 60 when I turn 18. I don’t have a driver’s license. Smith College only accepts 45% of applicants. My right arm hurts. My neck hurts. My head hurts. My jaw hurts. My chest hurts.

I counted some things that weren’t bad or good: the wood stove rattles when it’s windy outside. Anti-depressants.

Most things fall into the third category.