"No, what's not fair is that I've been sleepwalking through life for eight years, and everyone seems perfectly content to keep me unconscious." I pause at the door. "I need to feel something real, David. Something that isn't filtered through therapy talk and good intentions."
"What does that even mean?"
I think of the card hidden in my wallet.
Black with silver lettering.
Purgatory.
A client at the victim advocacy center had dropped it during our session last week, babbling about her ex-boyfriend, about the things he did to her there.
She'd been horrified. I'd been intrigued.
"It means I'm going to find out who I really am."
The door closes on his protests.
My phone starts buzzing before I even reach my car.
David:
Please come back. We can talk about this.
I love you.
Don't do anything dangerous.
I delete them all and call Emilia.
"Hey babe! Are you coming to dinner? Dad's making his famous?—"
"I broke up with David."
There’s an initial silence, and then she speaks. "What? When? Why? Sel, what happened?"
"Can you meet me at my apartment? I need..."
I need an alibi.
I need someone to believe I'm having a normal post-breakup breakdown instead of what I'm actually planning. "I need my best friend."
"Of course! Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. I'll bring wine and ice cream. Give me twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes.
Enough time to get home and change into something that looks like pajamas instead of what I'm actually wearing underneath—black lace that David has never seen, and never will see.
Soon enough, Emilia arrives with two bottles of wine, a pint of Ben & Jerry's, and that look of concern I've grown so accustomed to.
Everyone looks at me like that—like I might shatter if they breathe too hard in my direction.
"Tell meeverything," she says, curling up on my couch in her Yale sweatshirt, looking exactly like what she is—safe, privileged, untouched by darkness.
So, I tell her a version of the truth.
That David was suffocating me.
That I need space.
