"Are you okay?" she asks.  I am standing and breathing.  I got up and showered and dressed and even managed to put some make-up on.  My hair is done and my clothes are clean.  I didn't eat anything, but that's nothing new.  I smile when she smiles at me.  I say the words she expects me to say as if I had a script entitled "What Normal People Say".  I know my lines.  I know the motions and which way to tilt my head to seem like I am really here and not buried, drowning in some distant bog inside my own head.  I am fine.

"Are you alright?" he drops, casually as we try not to remember that we once occupied the entire territories of each others' hearts.  I tell him that I am feeling better.  It's true.  My ribs still ache a little at night now, but it's better.  Sometimes there are a few tears that fall out of mourning for that life.  For him?  Who knows.  Not me.  But I am fine.  Thanks for checking.  I am fine.

"How are you doing?" she looks across the desk and inserts this side note.  It's not pertinent my education, but she seems to want to know.  How would her eyes change if I blurted out the truth?  If I spoke those worries out loud, if I told anyone that my soul is wounded beyond repair, that I broke my own damn heart into 8 million pieces, that I am hemorrhaging hope, what would happen?  Would I feel better?  Would I be able to sleep by the mere act of sharing those things with your soft brown eyes and willing ears?  Would the sound of my tears hitting the desk drown out the constant buzz of "I hate you" that lurks like a shadow in my ears?  Would untying my tongue release whatever sickness this is that has eaten away all the best parts of me? I suppose that all you would do is worry and all I would feel is cumbersome.  I am fine.  Somehow the muscles of my face can still form a smile.  Somehow my tears have been postponed.  I must be fine.

"You hanging in there, kiddo?" he asks, already knowing the answer I'll give.  Maybe it makes him feel better to hear those words in my voice even if they are a weak facade.  Of course I am hanging in there.  I am hanging myself by my own worthless dreams.  I am hanging on the notion that it is a big world and a broad life with plenty of room for happiness.  I am hanging by a dwindling thread.  I am so tangled up in my ropes as I dangle precariously over the deep end that I look almost as if I am dancing as I struggle.  Hanging in there?  Yes.  Precisely.  I am flawless in that aspect.  I am fine.

"You're fine?"  Absolutely.  That is what I tell them.  Never been better, in fact.  I used to be ambivalent about love and life and the fact that it ends.  Now I welcome the endings.  I have set up shop in foothills of the bottomless pit and I intend to stay here.  I intend to breathe.  I intend to rest and wake.  I will take my food like medicine.  I will learn to find relief in giving up.  I will remove myself from the fight, wrap myself in my white flag, and comfort myself in the knowledge that I am not immortal.  I will let up my grasp on the existence of faith and hope and love.  None of those things exist.  And if they don't exist, I don't either.  And if I don't exist, none of this matters.  These waters are deep and tumultuous.  This is no place for the buddy system.  I am so plainly alone and I am fine with it.  I feel nothing so I am fine by default. 

I am Sheza, and really, I'm fine.