In the weeks that followed, this hot, blinding fury would turn to cavernous, uncontrollable sadness. My therapist said this was normal, that I was going through the process of grief. I started kickboxing, running, anything to release the tension that I could never truly evade. The hole in my apartment remained untouched, but I spent many nights pounding my pillow, yearning to go into the woods, onto a mountaintop, somewhere isolated where I could scream until my throat was raw.

Otherwise, I was distracting myself. Cooking elaborate recipes again. Going to friends’ apartments on the weekends for parties and hangouts. Celebrating my birthday with a few friends at Beth’s apartment.

“You know, in the grand scheme of things, it was only five months of your life,” Beth said one evening. “I dated Carmen longer than that, and I barely think about her anymore,” she added, Carmen being the college girlfriend she’d been with on and off again throughout all four tumultuous years.

And it was true, a mantra I continued telling myself day in and day out. It was not even half a year. And anyone could lose themselves in something for that short length of time and emerge with minimal emotional scarring.

Right?

I pick up the pace through the park, the wind howling, nipping at my ears. A group of students sits near one subway entrance, smoking a joint, and the sweet smell warms me as I dig my hands deeper into my coat pockets, thinking about my conversation with Kelly.

“You know, something similar happened to my sister when she was a teenager. She got really taken in by this teacher, biology I think it was. She was always on my sister’s case about ‘accessing her potential.’ Then the teacher took her to this weird meeting, think The Secret but with a bunch of very dolled-up Southern women, and she freaked out and asked to switch classes.” Kelly took a sip of her coffee, appraising me. “So my point is, I don’t judge you.”

But Kelly’s words hadn’t had a comforting effect. Because she’d said her sister had been a teenager. And there I was at twenty-five, spending time with a woman who had blatantly lied about her past and drugged small children. And I’d let her take over my life. What was wrong with me? I had thought I was relatively stable. Yes, I’d grown up without a mom, but my dad had been more than enough.

I shake my head as I head into Dr. Ihm’s waiting room and lose myself staring at the cutout on the wall, a reproduction of Matisse’s Nu Bleu IV, the shaped paper a little too clean around the edges to be real.