Control Freak

“How restless was she when you first started at the museum?”

I take a deep, shuddering breath. “At first, I thought she wasn’t going to let me work there, but the structure of the work and Mr. Blomqvist’s—Stian’s—authority meant that everything just seemed to grow quiet in my head. There were a few hiccups. He caught me eating on the stairs, and I was afraid he’d think I was crazy. There was a drinks reception I ran out of. Then we started… Well, you know what we started doing.”

“Did you think about her in that box very often?”

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. “All the time. I spent so much energy visualizing that box and making sure it was sealed tight, but in the end it was no good. She got out.”

“What allowed her to escape?”

“I did, because I’m not strong enough. I started thinking about a life I could have with Stian, one where we were a proper couple. I think I knew that I wouldn’t have the energy to maintain her prison and do all the things I wanted with him, and everything just crumbled. Out she came, bigger and stronger than before.”

“What did she say when she got out?”

“That I’ll never be free of her. That I belong to her, and no one else.”

My eyes land on my food diary, a pathetic, weak tool in the face of her strength. I snatch it up and start tearing the pages out. “I hate it all!” I scream. “I hate everything. It was all a huge lie. What’s the point of living if I can’t be happy? If all I can do is just exist?”

I hurl the book to the other side of the room, and it flutters to the ground like a bird that’s been shredded midflight. Little pieces of paper flutter down like broken feathers.

“There is more for you,” Doctor Loftin tells me gently, after a few minutes. “But we have to deal with your disease first. The more you try to suppress something, the harder it fights back to be heard.”

“I’m not able to deal with her in any other way. Right now she’s free, and she’s rampaging around in my head. I don’t know how to get her back in that box, and I’ve got nothing with which to arm myself against her. The only thing that makes her quiet is not eating. I have to eat, and so she just screams and screams.”

I rub a shaky hand over my face. I haven’t slept properly since the surgery.

“Have you been practicing the techniques they taught you on the ward and the exercises we do together? It’s important to allow the disordered thoughts to flow through your mind like water.”

“She’s too loud, and too much,” I whisper, shaking my head. “None of it works.”

What’s a little mindfulness going to achieve when what I really wanted was a life with Stian? I’m not going to meditate my way through a date with him. Mindfulness isn’t going to cut it when I want to spend the night in his bed.

Doctor Loftin twists her pen in her hand, just watching me. This is what she dislikes the most: when I throw what she’s offering back in her face. I suppose it hurts her professional pride, being told that everything she believes can help me isn’t worth anything.

She glances at the clock. Our time is up, and she closes her notebook. “There’s so much you want from life, Lacey. If you shut all possibilities down, there won’t be anything left for you.”

I can’t be happy with just some possibilities. Every time I think about Stian and the life I imagined with him, I become overwhelmed by despair.

There’s a chasm between what I want and what I can have, so what’s even the point of trying?

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lacey

“What about re-enrolling? We should probably think about you going back for the next semester so you can earn that Masters degree.”

Mum straightens the duvet and the cushions on my bed, which is hard to do, seeing as I’m lying on them. I got out of bed today, for a while at least, but now I’m back in my room again. I’m still in my pajamas at eleven in the morning.

“Yeah,” I say listlessly, staring at the ceiling. “I guess.”

She looks down at me helplessly and then pinches the bridge of her nose. “Lacey, you have to do something. You were never like this before.”

I roll onto my side and face the wall, closing my eyes. Mum sighs and leaves me alone.

I’m too tired to re-enroll. I’m too tired to do anything at all, though when night comes I can’t sleep, and instead I lie awake in the dark, wondering what Stian’s doing. Asleep in his big bed, probably, shirtless beneath the sheets, his blond hair rumpled against the pillow. During the day he will have been fiendishly busy at the museum, his fingers flying over the keyboard as he types, or marching through exhibition spaces, his discontented blue eyes searching for things that don’t meet his exacting standards. That someone has so much energy seems magical to me now, though it wasn’t so long ago that I was working ten or eleven hour days at his side.