by Chelsea Sieg
free college counseling!
it’s the way of the future!
what could possibly go wrong?
(side effects may include:
flunking out of college due to depression;
not having a purpose in life anymore
because you flunked out of college due to depression;
being constantly reminded by your shadow
that you are a failure
because you flunked out of college due to depression.
if you suffer from a depression lasting longer than four hours,
go die in a hole, you pathetic failure.)
so here we go again: one hour per week
with her telling me
that i suck at relationships
or that relationships suck at me
(i’m not sure which one).
nothing got better
and nothing got worse,
but at least it was free
for me to sit there and be told
that i shouldn’t smoke pot
with guys who want to have sex with me.
there was this one day
where she kept asking me about my grandmother,
whose death had sent me to bed with a razor
and was quickly causing me to fail all my classes.
i tried to avoid it like the perpetual freshman i was,
but she kept asking, and asking, and asking,
and when i’d started crying,
she told me that she’d done it
because she noticed i avoided talking about my grandmother.
i nodded
and then went back to my room
and cried some more.
it would be several more years before i was diagnosed
with realizing that the world has no safe places,
but i think back then
it was already true.