Page 18 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
I gritted my teeth.
2. Think about what you want to do with your life.
3. Go on a date.
Dr. Mason was pushing it this time, I decided as I typed in that last point. Hadn’t I been a good patient? I thought I was mostly low-maintenance, and yet here she was, handing out existential homework. I’d told her I wasn’t interested in bringing someone else into my life, especially given how precarious it was, and now she wanted me to go on a date?
What happened to the simple, meaningless tasks she gave me at the beginning of our sessions?
Write down five things you’re grateful for.
Journal about a time you were most happy.
Those kinds of things.
The checkbox exercises I did out of obligation. I mean, I could do gratitude journals until my fingers fell off if that’s what she wanted.
But this?
Figure out what to do with my life?
Go on a date?
Look up long-term survivors?
These were future-shaped tasks hidden inside homework and it made my chest feel tight.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes.
My gaze drifted to my obnoxiously neat desk. Everything sitting in its designated place, a sharp contrast to the overwhelming, scattered mess inside my mind. I glanced down at my open planner, lips pursing at the color-coded sticky notes carefully placed along the page edges. I frowned at myself.
It was as if I had convinced myself that being hyper-organized might somehow give me a smidge of control over my own existence.
I twirled a strand of red hair around my finger and returned to glaring petulantly at the screen, wondering how I was supposed to get through these assignments without losing my mind.
Researching survivors.
After a full year of obsessively researching death, it felt unnatural to suddenly flip the script, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. Sure, my entire online presence revolved around survival. I’d been documenting everything for years, ever since I took over the account from my mom.
I gave people hope.
But it wasn’t like Ibelievedin it.
I gave people hope because I didn’t want anyone else to feel the way I had. I could still remember the moment I woke up with someone else’s heart in my chest. With the crushing realization that someone had to die so I could live.
It was the most shattering feeling I’d ever experienced.
This assignment was already stupid. I was still thinking about the same horrible stuff.
Surely that hadn’t been her intention when she set the tasks.
I knew, at the core of it, what Dr. Mason truly wanted. She wanted me to think about the future. A real future. One where I didn’t fixate on worst-case scenarios, where I planned for things instead of waiting for them to fall apart again.
“Like it’s that easy,” I muttered grimly, scratching absentmindedly at the nape of my neck with a grimace.
With a sigh, I opened a new tab.
If I had to do this homework, I might as well start with the worst part. It was like eating dinner. Tackle the vegetables first so you could get to the roast meat and potatoes. In this case, my vegetables were the dating assignment.
