I'm waiting in line at the euthanasia clinic. It's popular--the line stretches out of the building, across its atrium and down the sidewalk. It's a kind, careful, painless, enlightened program with lots of steps where you can rethink your decision. I've been in it for months. But I'm near the end of the process; if all the forms are in order I could even die today.

Before and after me in line are two similar women--kind, intelligent, likable auras. Am I attracted to them? A bit late! I don't talk much, but I listen and start to face that I now doubt I want to kill myself, though the program and the sheer number of people around me who ARE ready to give up... both sway me to accept death. After all, by the accepted measures of happiness--love and community and so on--I'm so isolated my life shouldn't be worth living. So I might as well die.

Of what? Of peer pressure? Bureaucratic momentum?

As long as we three are together, I'm cushioned, even enjoying myself--I genuinely like proximity to these women, and sense they too have a capacity to enjoy life, and shouldn't die.

But... clinging to their life-affirming auras means I stay in the death line!

When at last I reach the head of the line, I'm issued into a private bedroom and left alone. My doubts grow. It's real now. On the bed rests a final form I must read and endorse.

Strange. It's in Russian. An English translation at the end, but... the bureaucrats wouldn't have handed me this unless they thought I'm a native Russian speaker who might misunderstand English.

What ELSE have they gotten wrong about me?

I got things wrong about me too. I have to face that I don't want to kill myself.

As I wake... what bothers me most is that I felt so comfortable, so comforted. The program's kindness lulled me--and others.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Benevolent program, bad result: on the news, I saw an anti-abortion leader interviewed. She was beautiful, idealistic and benevolent--in her own mind. She got a judge in Amarillo, Texas to ban mifepristone nationwide--a drug used for early abortion. Save those embryos! Save those women from their murderous ignorance! Jail them! Jail their friends! Small-town Christian Texans are the sole arbiters of what's medicine or murder, cell or soul, right or wrong, life or death. Bye-bye religious freedom!
• Clinic: My clinic talks up social bonds as an unmixed good. What if those bonds lull you, even sway you against your own interest? And healthcare prioritizes those THEY decide have lives worth living--those with strong social connections. Love's all very nice, but autistics like me who value original work over love or happiness get devalued, just like anyone without light skin, money, or a dick. And in healthcare, devalued means killed--by neglect, but still killed. The GOP warns "socialized medicine" would mean "government death panels"--but right now we have corporate death panels.
• Social bonds, suicide: my sister Miriel visited. She looked tired and ill. I played her my dream-song Ferrygoat--about a scapegoat everyone exploits. She conceded its message applies to both of us. Resisting conformist pressure leaves me lonely; but she twists herself up to get acceptance, and it's just killing her.
• Russian: I live in a port town with lots of refugees, so vital forms do get printed in multiple languages. But thinking I'm a Russian immigrant is proof they don't know me at all. My values... or my value.
• ACTION: Stay lonely, wary, and alive. Take care of myself; I can't rely on healthcare's neurotypical agenda. Be blunt with my sister about the path she's on. Love has a prerequisite: life.

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