Since I have nothing finished and it's driving me crazy, here are some quotes from my mother

"I looked really good for court today."

"I feel like setting things on fire. Is that okay?"

"It's really rude to kill yourself."

Status Quo

I wear business casual and hardly think. I attend meetings when the little reminder comes up on Outlook. I smile and chat with my office mate. I get up too much, refill coffee or water, walk to the bathroom, pass people in the too-narrow hallway with friendly acknowledgement. I write e-mails with exclamation points. I leave early every Tuesday for my appointment, but no one knows what it’s for. Unspecified health issues. At the appointment they’re trying to train me how to think differently, better, with mindfulness and coping strategies, but it’s not that relevant to me because I haven’t been thinking much, at least not inwardly. I am okay. I am working somewhere vaguely related to my degree. I can pretend that I’m working there as a real staff member rather than a service member on a poverty-level stipend. Sometimes I think I’m fooling them into thinking I’m normal, confident, capable, then suddenly panic that I may not be fooling them at all. My sister, not the one in crazy class, the other one, thinks she’s great at fooling people, but she’s not. People are better at detecting instability than you think. But then sometimes people completely miss the painfully obvious, because in general they don’t care about you. I have not fucked up yet. I’m doing a good job. I’m overqualified and they are so happy to have someone with my skills. I look like another normal person in the office, and I am not thinking too much. I am okay.