Throw Away Your Prozac Zoey Hunsinger Stay in bed. Refuse to open the oxford curtains. Never feel the rays of sunlight against your face. Your best friend will call you lazy. Then when you two get a ‘treat yourself’ lunch, don’t offer to pay for your croissant sandwich. She’ll roll her eyes and mutter, “I got it.” She’ll pay the $10.67 in cash. You’ll be indebted in a way that could not ever be repaid, even if you give her gas money on a later date. Dry heave into a bag. Take two Tylenol for the Calculus homework headaches. Realize your best friend is right. You’ll fail your first college class. You’ll never know if it’s because you wouldn’t show up, or your professor just graded too hard. When summer cotton candy skies approach, get a copy of the Star—see Subway is hiring. Don’t apply, you won’t get it anyway. Once your classes start again, don’t sharpen your pencils—you won’t take notes, and you sure as hell won’t study. You’re lazy. Leave your textbooks in an unorganized pile. Don’t do your laundry. Your roommate will think you’re lazy too. She’ll also think you’re a mess. She won’t ever say anything, she’s too tenderhearted to ever lobby a criticism, but she won’t need to. You’ll know by the way she edges your dirty dishes to the sink. Start hiding moldy dish- es under your bed. Never lift a finger to clean them. One afternoon, you’ll walk in on her vacuuming. Don’t hang your petticoat up. Throw it on the couch. She’ll sigh. Don’t worry though, she won’t actually say anything. She won’t even comment about your leftover pizza box sitting on her desk (yours will be too crowded to place it there) or the crumbs gathering on your side of the room. She won’t even complain when you forget to clean your hair out of the shower drain. But, she won’t need to say a word, be- cause you’ll know the truth. You’re a mess. Your art professor will think you’re a mess too, and that you’re sloppy. You won’t draw a straight line. You’ll get paint every- where. You won’t be able to stay inside the box. Your drawing of a 44 45 blue-eyed Huskey that took four cups of coffee and a sleepless night will be stained in ink stating for you to draw “neater” and “cleaner.” In order to pass the class, you’ll have to stick to the status quo and draw a straight line. But you won’t pass the class, because you’re not normal. You’re unusual. Be an astronaut. Float in outer space while you kiss your boy- friend. He’ll think you’re unusual too. When you two touch, think about lines and what your art professor says. On occasion, kissing won’t even feel right. Don’t tell him this. Don’t dare mention the rock that’ll form in your stomach at the thought of undressing him. Lay awake at night. Run a starved finger over your lips. Brush your teeth four times to forget that his saliva has been in your mouth. Think if you weren’t unusual, you’d be able draw straight lines and enjoy having a boy touch your lips. Your mother won’t like that you’re not normal. She’ll tell you this every time you mention your best friend with the cute auburn hair who pays for your croissant. She also won’t like that you stay in bed all day with your curtains shut. You’ll hate that you stay in bed all day. But it’s okay. You already hate a lot of things about your- self from your toes that are as long as your fingers to your elephant ears, to how you think more about your best friend’s lips than you do your boyfriend’s. Your mother will say that you worry too much. You’ll worry that you worry too much and that sometimes your thoughts aren’t even your own thoughts. Every Tuesday, you’ll stare at the popcorn ceiling of your therapist’s office and think about all the problems in your life. You’ll sit in the plastic chair. Stare at your boney fingers. Your throat will be too dry to speak. You’ll rub your knuckles. Pick at your cuticles. You’ll do all you can to not look at your therapist’s red hair. She’ll click her pen and say if you got out of bed more often then things could get better. But you’ll never get out of bed—you’re lazy.