“There was no life until you.”
“There was no life until you.”
He feels that way because of me, and I didn’t do anything to make him come to that decision. I didn’t make him bring me here, be there for me, or ask him to look after me. He’s made all of those decisions on his own.
Freely.
Without pressure.
If he wants me here, then I need to damn well start embracing that and stop thinking that he is just putting me up because he feels sorry for me. Cal is my friend, and friends do this type of stuff for each other. God, Michael really has distorted my perception. Bastard. I need him to pay for what he has done.
Rage. It flows through me like wildfire and consumes the very part where my heart beats, making it pump a little faster.
One minute I feel like I’m no good, then the next I’m feeling all sentimental over friendship, and then I end up on anger? It’s like I travel from one emotion to the next in the blink of an eye. It’s exhausting, and it’s like being on a fucking merry-go-round that I can’t get off of.
“Lucy, you ready to go?” Cal says, pulling me back to the here and now as he stands at the kitchen doorway, ready to go to the paint store. Such a simple, mundane task, but one that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Simple and mundane would satisfy me for the rest of my life.
“I’m ready,” I say in answer to him, but also in answer to myself.
I’m ready to fight this.
I’m ready to try and start letting go of the pain.
I’m ready to let myself feel more than I should for Cal.
I’m ready to try and get back to the old me, the one before it all went to shit.
I’m ready to live again.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Talking to a stranger
Lucy
“This is a safe space, a space in which you can talk freely and start to work through your thoughts and feelings, a space where there is no judgement and no pressure. We can go at your pace, you’re in control here, not me.”
Ava.
My therapist. The one that was recommended to me after I gave my police statement the other day. My moods have been so up and down, so I decided that it was time to talk to someone other than Cal and Kim. They’ve been great, but I can see that they are struggling with how to help me, but the real problem here is, they can’t. I have to help myself.
So, here I am, ready to divulge all of the ugliness that lives inside of me to a stranger.
Ava is pretty with brown curls that fall just below her shoulders, green eyes that are warm and friendly, she’s tall, dresses like a boss, and exudes a confidence that I long to feel. She’s forty-one years old and has been a therapist for the last ten years, specialising in domestic abuse. It’s something that shouldn’t exist but happens on a daily basis for thousands of women all over the world.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I say, my hands trembling with nerves.
“You start wherever you feel most comfortable,” Ava says, a kind smile on her face.
Wherever I feel comfortable.
Where is that?
I have no idea.
But I guess my mind decides for me as I start to talk.
I begin with when I first noticed that I had become a domestic abuse victim, and with how by the time I noticed, I was in too deep, couldn’t see a way out and thought that I could make it all better if I just behaved and did as I was told.
