NanoWriMo Part One

‘I want you to imagine a metal box.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s a small metal box.’

‘How small?’

‘Like, really small. Like just big enough to fit you in.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘A box the size of me.’

‘Yeah. So you’re in this box.’

‘Mhmm.’

‘And you can’t get out. There are no doors, no windows, no hole in the roof.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘There’s no light, no fresh air. You’re suffocating.’

‘Hmm. That’s a problem.’

‘It is. The only way out — ’

‘You said there wasn’t any way out.’

‘Well there’s one way out.

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You should’ve said.’

‘I’m saying now. The only way out is a trapdoor. There’s a button you can push that’ll open a trapdoor and you’ll fall out the bottom. And you’ll be free.’

‘Ah.’

‘So you’re imagining this.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Doesn’t life feel a lot like that box?’

I was about half an hour into the fourth session of my therapist trying to persuade me to kill myself, and it was going really well.