I’d tell her I wanted to die and unlike my parents, who’d burst into tears or shame me for being broken, making it all about themselves and their own fears and their expectations of me, Ingvild would listen, unafraid. She’d speak about the lack of language for pain this intense, and how people often say they want to die when what they mean is that they can’t live with such torment. I’d insist that it was death I wanted. I couldn’t bear to be around Elisabeth, either – I knew that the haunted look in her eyes was mirrored in my own. Ingvild would ask me what the alternative to death might look like, and I said that returning to my old life just wasn’t possible. I wonder whether there could be a middle ground, she’d say, not death, and not your old life. A new normal. A life worth living, now.

I look around my home and realize that I have really made a life worth living, now. I have a home, a stable marriage, purpose. But I don’t have Elisabeth and I can’t shake off the self-hatred I feel for what I did and didn’t do for her. Her life is a closed chapter and she will never find a life worth living, now. The only solace she found was in hard drugs and in her art, and in me, and she was equally devoted to all three, though none of them could save her.

I unhook the huge painting from its mooring on the wall but underestimate its heaviness and it comes crashing to the floor, one sharp corner landing on my bare foot. I scream, so loud I’m sure the neighbors could hear it. The cry of pain just becomes crying and as if I have no control over myself, I grab a bronze candelabra from the table and smash it full force into the painting, effortlessly ripping the canvas. Elisabeth’s hypnotic swirls of emerald green and burgundy reds burst open and are swallowed up by great, jagged rips. When there is nothing left of it except the edges that are stapled to the wooden framework, I gather up the strips and chunks of limp canvas that once held the imagery of Elisabeth’s inner world and place them into the glass-walled fireplace. I place a couple of logs on top, one wrapped in newspaper, then set it alight. I stand in the middle of the room for a long while, listening to the crackle and hiss of the flames, breathing in the chemical smell of burning paint, practicing a deep, slow breathing pattern to calm my nerves.