Mood Lighting

I showed up in pajamas.
Not the flannel, ironic kind—
just the kind you forget to take off
when your entire life feels like
the loading screen of a video game
you no longer want to play.

The lights were interrogation bright.
I asked for mood lighting.
She smiled like I was joking.
I wasn’t.

She looked more depressed than I did.
Slouched in a way that said,
I, too, have Googled “cheap flights out of here.”
Wrist deep in other people’s trauma
and barely blinking.
The therapist equivalent of
"Thank you for holding, your call is very important to us."

She asked if I had suicidal thoughts
like my mother.
I said:
Lady, my whole body is a suicidal thought.
Cancer is suicide from the inside out.
I don’t have to hurt myself—
I simply have to wait.
She laughed.
Then paused.
Then asked if I needed a safety plan.
I told her I was safe.
But not okay.
She nodded, like that was somehow
comforting.

She asked if there was a history of cancer in my family.
“No,” I said. “But lots of sarcasm.”
She laughed.
Then squinted,
like she was trying to decide
if that counted as genetic.

She kept prying.
And I kept tossing punchlines
like confetti at a funeral.
I told her I was a farceur.
She didn’t know the word.
But she laughed anyway.
People always do.
Right before they ask if you’re “open to exploring deeper emotions.”

“When’s the last time you used cannabis?”
“This morning,” I lied.
It was twenty minutes ago.
Hot-boxed the Honda
in the parking lot
like a holy sacrament.

Two hours later,
she recommends weekly therapy.
Not biweekly.
Not “as needed.”
Weekly.
Like church.
Like penance.

I’m already one foot out the door,
wondering how someone with a stack of fidget toys
and a PhD in ADHD
plans to treat a human house fire
with breathing exercises.

But there aren’t a lot of options
in rural Idaho.

So I nod.
She smiles.
The fluorescent lights flicker
like even they’re tired of pretending.

And I walk out
into a softer kind of brightness—
the kind that doesn't ask questions,
or write anything down,
or laugh when you say
the dying part out loud.

A musing by Rachel Smak on grief, loss, and lessons from stage 3C rectal cancer