Flaw Salad

You walk into the clinic, and you hope no one saw you. You feel ashamed to be here. This is not a place for someone like you. This is a place for frightened teenagers. You should have outgrown this place, this pathetic uncertainty.

But here you are.

Your eyes are low, and your voice is lower as you approach the front desk. If you can make yourself smaller and softer, maybe they won’t notice you. Maybe you can whisper your way into a different reality.

“Have you been here before?” The receptionist behaves normally. Maybe she guesses at something when you provide your date of birth. Aren’t you too old for a place like this?

You are. You’re too old to look her in the eyes. You’re too old to answer these questions. You’re too old to be this out of control of your life.

“It says here you didn’t want to declare your income. Is that still true?” She raises an expectant face toward yours.

“Well, I might have to,” you say. “Because it’s none.”

Now she understands. She looks away and leaves you to your shame. Without attempting eye contact, she tells you they have funding to cover your services today and would you please leave your urine sample in the bathroom around the corner and then take a seat in the lobby.

You take the label into the single-stall toilet, and as warm urine splashes onto your hand, you remember a life you once lived. In a large house and a diamond ring, you were snug in the trappings of comfort and success.

Now you place your sample in the metal cabinet and return to the waiting room. You try to shrink to invisible.