She sits in the corner, quietly minding her own business at first. Legs crossed, eyebrows pressing together, she is a vision of pragmatism as she scribbles notes on a clipboard, pausing occasionally to press the pen to her lips and squint at nothing in particular. I don’t know how she knows I’m awake. I don’t even know I’m awake yet.
“Ah, there you are,” she pounces, putting down her pen. “I’m glad you’re awake so that we can discuss all your failures. Failures and failings, actually, as so many are ongoing.”
“I don’t know, I thought I was doing pretty good,” I manage to croak out, eyes still sealed shut.
She laughs. “Of course you did! That’s what I told you last night so you could fall asleep. But it’s daytime now (has been for a while, not that you would know), and it’s time to take a long, hard, ruthless look in the mirror. Oh, I’m sorry, would you like to have coffee first?”
“It would be nice,” I mutter.
“Of course you would. You’re a weak person.”
“Hey,” I retort.
“Good! Your eyes are mostly open now. Take a look around this room. How long have you lived here? Four years? And you’re still using these dumb curtains that aren’t even long enough? And please don’t tell me you’re still pretending that you’re going to paint the walls someday.”
“I might,” I muse.
“Yeah. Kind of like you ‘might’ wash that mound of delicates one day?”
“Rude.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it, I’m just trying to help. Help you be better! Speaking of which, is today the day you’re going to start reading books? Doing yoga? Drinking enough water?”
“We’ll see how I feel,” I say, picking up a cup of coffee which has quite magically appeared on my nightstand.
“Right. Do I need to tell you that you’ve been saying that almost every day for the last, oh, twelve years?”
I sip my coffee in silence, seeing how I feel.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ll back off a touch. What would you like to accomplish today?”
Encouraged by the subtle optimism of this question, I sit up.
“Well, for starters, I was thinking I might actually do some writing this morning…”
She snickers.
“…and then I’d like to finally clip my toenails…”
She snorts.
“…and then, I don’t know, maybe I’ll clean my bathroom!”
She cackles. “Darling, have you met you? What’s next, are you going to jump-start your old Volvo? Return everybody’s chamber music parts that you’ve been sitting on for the last nine years? Who knows, maybe you’ll go grocery shopping and cook dinner!”
She laughs at this hilarious joke. I sigh and take another sip.
“But seriously, dear, why don’t you get showered and we’ll get to work. I have a number of ideas which I think you’ll find compelling as to why Megan might have been giving you the cold shoulder yesterday, and we might as well review all the possible reasons why Edward and his wife both unfriended you at the same time.”
“Yeah. Okay, that sounds good,” I say as I swing my legs out from under the covers.
“There’s one more thing. This is a big one for you. Honey, why is it so hard for you to have fun?”
I stare at her incredulously.
She vanishes.