She awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day her heart would descend from her chest into her stomach. By early afternoon she was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for her, and by the desire to be alone. By evening she was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of her grief, alone in her aimless guilt, alone even in her loneliness. I am not sad, she would repeat to herself over and over, I am not sad. As if she might one day convince herself. Or fool herself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because her life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. She would fall asleep with her heart at the foot of her bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of her at all. And each morning she would wake with it again in the cupboard of her rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon she was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.
