Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate, so we can buy shit we don't need.

Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you.

Worker bees can leave.
Even drones can fly away.
The Queen is their slave.

This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention.

If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window.

You had their full attention.

People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.

And when they spoke, they weren't just telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.

My doctor said, if I wanted to see real pain, I should swing by First Eucharist on Tuesday night. See the brain parasites. See the degenerative bone diseases. The organic brain dysfunctions. See the cancer patients getting by.

So I went.

The first group I went to, there were introductions: this is Alice, this is Brenda, this is Dover. Everyone smiles with the invisible gun to their head.

I never give my real name at support groups.
The little skeleton of a woman named Chloe with the seat of her pants hanging down and empty, Chloe tells me the worst thing about her brain parasites was no one would have sex with her.

Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy. The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you.

Ever since college, I make friends. They get married. I lose friends.
Fine.
Neat, I say.
Tyler asks, is this a problem for me?
I am Joe's Clenching Bowels.
No, I say, it's fine.
Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.