Through the mosquito-netted window, freezing cold New York wind swept the room as Mary Ann made her way back from the kitchen countertop to the couch. Compared to her previous trip, her walk lacked coordination. She moved with the cross-legged convexity of amateur skiers, but the couch turned out to be quite far. She settled for the orange living room table, sat on the one slender IKEA chair (opposite a low, uncomfortable wooden bench with no back support), and lay her whole torso on the cold metal surface, arms crossed, facedown, eyes closed. She started crying. Soon she realized she was thinking of how this would look to others—like a movie audience or something—her sad, beautiful body arched and moving up and down from the sobbing, a picture-perfect image of scripted pain. Then she realized she was still thinking of herself, performing for attention, demanding to be looked at; that even in absolute, heartrending suffering she was still a prisoner of her desire to be seen, she was still fake. That no matter how much she hurt, she was still so much a piece of utter shit that she couldn’t access one true, genuine feeling, and if she couldn’t now, defenseless and weak, then when? Then she started crying for real.