Cabin Fever

by Alex Dahl

  When I try to determine what exactly you know of me, I draw a blank. I can’t be sure. Once, I thought you knew and intrinsically understood everything about me, that you had preemptive powers to discern my every need before I could even begin to identify them myself. I was wrong, of course. But you know about the way I think. You know that emotion comes at me thick and fast. You know that I’ve been burned. You know that I don’t love myself and that it leads to others taking what shouldn’t be given away. And yet, you only know what I’ve told you. This is where we differ, you and I. You have told me exactly nothing about yourself, and yet I know – dare I say – everything. Even things you yourself don’t know.

  Let me explain. Beginnings.

  It all started very innocently, and entirely by chance. I’d been coming to see you for a few months by then, so it must have been around Easter time. I was settling into therapy and found that it had become a lifeline. The sessions made me ask myself questions I wouldn’t otherwise have raised. My awareness increased. What was my response in a given situation, and why? Could it be different in the future? It was exhilarating to realize that I may have a choice in the matter. But most of all, the thing that brought real change was the bond built between you and me. I trusted you. You showed me what I could do in a million little ways. You were never late, never distracted, always focused on whatever I brought to the room and for the first time, it made me feel like I actually mattered, that my feelings should be listened to and valued. By pretending you cared (and it is pretending) you made me care.

  Back to that Easter. It was a beautiful Friday and we had a good session. I remember it clearly – I asked you lots of questions about yourself, which you gently deflected. I wanted to know about you because as the sessions increasingly began to have an effect on me, I felt intensely attached to you. I still do. Those feelings have played along the whole spectrum of human emotion, from neediness to admiration to attraction to love to dislike and even hatred.

  To obsession.

  After our session that day, I felt strangely liquid inside, like you’d torched me with your careful questions, setting fire to the long-held beliefs about myself that no longer served me. Leah, could it be that you deserve your own kindness? That sounds like a very distressing experience, Leah. Even if he said you deserved it and you believed him in that moment, does it mean it was actually true? Could it be that you deserve to be loved?

  I walked the few meters from your office to Kaffebrenneriet on the corner of Parkveien and Bogstadveien, ordered a cortado and sat in the corner by the large windows, my back to the counter. It was loud in there, the baristas banging the portafilters against the countertops to empty the espresso grits, a steady chatter of the afternoon coffee crowd from nearby offices, and the occasional blue tram rambling past outside, heading uptown. I saw a flash of orange pass by the window as I raised the cortado to my nostrils, drawing its perfect bitter and burned scent into me, then the door opened, bringing a cool draft. Then I heard your voice.

  A double tall white Americano, you said. I turned my head slowly, to double-check that it really was you. You stood, unaware, scrolling on your phone, waiting. When your coffee was ready you flashed a quick smile at the barista and it made me irrationally angry for a moment, watching you smile at someone as inconsequential as a random café worker when I was used to having your undivided attention. Your smile also prompted another wave of that liquid heat in my stomach. This was back when I sometimes felt confused by overwhelming attraction to you.

  You took your coffee to go, and before I knew it, I’d left my cortado half-drunk on the narrow window table and scrambled after you out onto the street, struggling to get my jacket on. It was only March and the air was crisp, but the sky was a deep indigo blue and the days were getting longer. The promise of spring had changed the atmosphere of the town and even the facial expressions of the people. You walked slowly up Bogstadveien, easy to spot in your orange parka, and I hung back at a little distance, yet close enough to observe you. You stopped to look in a few windows, sipping at your coffee, and several times you checked your phone. About halfway up Bogstadveien, you crossed over to the other side. I followed. You turned down Rosenborggata, a quiet residential street, and I wondered whether it was where you lived – I didn’t know anything about you back then. I hovered at the corner of the main street, pretending to look at my phone, and watched you approach a white, turn-of-the-century apartment building.

  You stood looking up at the building for a long while, as if psyching yourself up to meet whoever was inside. You raised your finger to the panel of doorbells on the side wall, and it hovered there a while. I couldn’t tell from where I stood whether you’d actually pressed one, and if so, which one. You glanced down the street in my direction, but wouldn’t have been able to pick me out; I stood partially hidden in a wide doorway opposite the Peak Performance shop. Your face had changed, and you looked troubled and nervous. Suddenly you seemed to change your mind and came walking back down the street toward me, drawing your parka tight, burying the lower part of your face in the faux-fur hood. You walked straight past me and into the throng of shoppers and people taking an early Friday, heading home from work downtown. I let you out of sight and remained in the doorway for a long while. Then I headed back down in the direction we’d come, until I arrived back at Kaffebrenneriet.

  The line was longer now, but I didn’t mind waiting. My head was spinning with what I’d done and seen. It had been exhilarating seeing you out of the therapy room, and I knew even that first day, that I’d do it again. I couldn’t have known then what I would find and what processes the slow discovery of Kristina Moss would bring about. Back then, you were still perfect to me, the way I wanted you to be. I wish I’d stopped there and then so you could have remained a shiny, flawless hologram. If I had, I wouldn’t be writing these words. But equally, it is the imperfect, real Kristina I came to discover that has brought true empathy and a deep desire to be there for you like you’ve been there for me.

  A double tall white Americano, I said when it was my turn to order, flashing the same barista who’d taken your order a quick smile.

  31

  Kristina

  I slam the MacBook shut so hard the sharp sound makes me jump. I take a few moments to recenter myself in my unfamiliar surroundings. It’s okay, I tell myself, but my heart is pounding and my hands tremble. In the minutes it took me to read Leah’s words, everything I believed about our relationship and our journey into therapy, have come undone. She’s betrayed me in the most fundamental way. The relationship between therapist and client necessarily has to be confined to the therapy room, and the therapist’s personal life and preferences need to remain unavailable to the client. This is difficult for a lot of people, as the bonds forged are so deep and the intimacies shared so life-changing. To think that Leah blatantly disregarded the explicitly stated boundaries of our relationship and followed me around is profoundly disturbing. Had I known, I would likely have had to end our working relationship.

  I try to determine whether there were any signs of her becoming unusually preoccupied with me, or especially interested in my personal life. She asked a few questions here and there; most people do. Right at the beginning, she would sometimes blush deeply and become visibly embarrassed by some of the things she’d tell me, especially if they were of a sexual nature. But there wasn’t anything she did that set off any alarm bells or gave me any cause for real concern, at least not in terms of our therapeutic relationship.

  I try to channel my feelings of empathy for Leah Iverson, for the person she is, a client I have always looked forward to seeing, and though it doesn’t come easily, this situation is clearly complicated and Leah is very disturbed, significantly more than I was aware, it would seem.

  Still, she betrayed me. I have the sensation that the relationship between us, the single most important aspect of the therapeutic process, has not only been irrevocably compromised, but also that it might have always been dif
ferent altogether than how I subjectively perceived it.

  I get up, still unsteady on my feet, but my mind is razor sharp. It seems to mean that Leah intended me to read Supernova, whatever this is, only in the event of something happening to her. But what did she think might happen to her?

  I know that I won’t be able to rest until I know what she meant. The strange thing I was left with in the years after my own traumatic experience was a heightened sense of danger. It’s easy enough to explain in medical terms – my body and brain remained on high alert, resulting in PTSD and anxiety issues which I have been able to resolve. And yet I have been left with an ability to sense danger, and I sense it now, that Leah’s words aren’t just the ramblings of someone in a compromised state of mind, but rather, something potentially dangerous. To herself, but also to me. What did she intend with Supernova? You have told me exactly nothing about yourself, and yet I know – dare I say – everything, she wrote.

  No one knows everything about me, not even myself. Not even now, after all the work I have done. All the years in therapy. So straight off, her statement is categorically untrue. She doesn’t know anything about me, let alone everything, and I’m starting to feel I didn’t know anything about her either.

  I have to keep reading. I glance around, and the cabin is entirely silent, like a cocoon. I open Leah’s Mac again.

  32

  Supernova

  I’m hoping we can agree that it started pretty innocently, that day you happened to walk into Kaffebrenneriet to order a tall white Americano and I trailed you up Bogstadveien. It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. It was such a rush to watch you when you didn’t know that you were being watched. Back then, at that stage of therapy when it had become a focal point in my life, you were constantly on my mind. An hour on Friday just wasn’t quite enough. Our sessions churned in my mind all week and I was always trying to conjure you up in my mind – your calm, encouraging way of being when I faltered, your gentle and unwavering support. I’d started to feel that you were like an invisible best friend I could carry around inside me, someone who’d always have my back even if you weren’t physically there in that moment.

  I’m not making excuses for my behavior; I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong. I’ve come to understand what my role is in your life – it’s not the poor, downtrodden client; it’s being your helper, your closest ally. Your savior, even. Of all the things you taught me, the most important thing was the realization that you can’t ever outrun the past. You have to process it, to use your own jargon. Integrate it into the narrative of your life. And I’m going to help you.

  It was an unseasonably warm spring, do you remember? Seen in the context of the autumns and winter we’ve had since, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that we’re witnessing a shift in the climate in which every season presents itself more extremely. Hotter, wetter, drier, colder, darker. And that spring came upon us so suddenly after a relentlessly wet and stormy winter, giving us day after day of glorious sunshine and temperatures in the early twenties in mid-April. It breathed everything back to life, even me. It was like the whole city was buzzing with new love.

  I did it again, two weeks after the first time. I waited for you at Kaffebrenneriet after our session, sipping a tall white Americano in the window seat. I’d gotten used to drinking my coffee just like yours by then. You didn’t come into the café, but after an hour or so, you emerged from your office and walked past on the other side of the street. That day, you wore dark-blue jeans and a white and navy striped sweater with gold buttons on the sleeves. You looked young and carefree, more like a student than a Doctor of Psychology. You were so impressive to me back then – it was like I needed to drink in every last part of you so I could retrieve them later in my mind, and emulate them. North Face orange parkas? I got one, too, but was careful to never wear it on a Friday. White and navy maritime sweater? Check. These things made me feel close to you, like if I wore them, something of you would rub off on me.

  Back to that day. You headed up Bogstadveien, like the last time. I followed at a distance, keeping your glossy, high ponytail in sight. If you’d suddenly turned around and noticed me walking in the same direction some distance behind you, it wouldn’t be weird at all. I’d merely stopped at a café after our session and happened to also be walking up one of Oslo’s busiest shopping streets. You took a right at the corner of Rosenborggata, like last time. That really caught my attention. You stopped at number 11 and hesitated by the doorbells. You stood looking up at the building for a long moment, as if psyching yourself up for meeting whoever was inside. I remembered the last time, when you’d suddenly turned back around and walked away, and I had to press myself into that doorway and hope you didn’t see me.

  You pressed the buzzer and disappeared inside. A couple of minutes later I went up to the door and read the names on the doorbells, but none of them gave me any clues.

  Christiansen. Mikkelsrud. Tanum. Siemens. Olsen-Hoff. Rickards. Thiske. Ellingsen.

  A lover? That was my first thought. It struck me like a bolt of lightening; the idea of you doing something sordid was totally irreconcilable with what I needed you to be. At the same time, I was intensely jealous at the thought of you having an illicit affair, and confused by those feelings. I knew you were married from the simple gold ring on your finger, and Google easily uncovered that your marriage was rather high profile. I’ll return to it, of course. But back then, it wasn’t Mr Moss who most held my attention. It was the suspicion that you were something other than I’d thought.

  I fell into a routine of sitting at that café several afternoons a week, keeping an eye on the door to your office building across the road, waiting for you. Sometimes I’d get up and follow you for a while; other times I’d just watch you, committing what you wore to memory. After those first couple of weeks of sheepishly following you around, my fascination with you grew drastically. You might think that observing another person’s day-to-day life might reveal them to be as underwhelming and boring as most people probably are, but oh, no – not you. Some parts of your life were as shiny and perfect as I’d previously imagined them to be. Your house, for example. Your husband. Your marriage. Your friends. (But only your new ones, right?) I’ll return to all of those things.

  The thing I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that you clearly had some problems. Secrets. In our sessions, you’d encourage me to look where it hurt, to try to describe painful experiences, insisting that to process them, they must be brought out into the light. But what about yours?

  *

  The following Friday we had another tough session.

  That day, you asked me to speak directly to myself as a child, to reconnect with that inherent goodness all children have and to consider whether I could find empathy with the little girl I once was. It didn’t work like that for me because the little girl I saw was worthless and dirty, like a thieving street urchin. You were moved by the way I spoke of myself and you asked whether I would be willing to consider from whose point of view I was observing myself as a child. Could it be that it wasn’t my own perception at all? What child perceives herself as inherently bad and unlovable? Could it be that this was how I imagined my father saw me, as a way to comprehend the profound rejection of his departure? And if so, could it be that my interpretation of this was simply wrong and entirely unrooted in reality?

  Your words hit me so hard it felt as though you prodded me with a searing prong, as though you knew me better than I could ever know myself. I felt at your mercy. But back then I felt at everyone’s mercy. And now, here we are; the tables have turned, and it is you who are at my mercy, and it is me using all of myself and everything you’ve taught me, to help you. You see, Kristina, nothing is as it seems. Sometimes our worlds, which look beautiful, are actually on fire.

  *

  After the session I deliberated over whether to just go home. I had plans that evening, with an old friend from Karlstad who was in town. I felt torn – a part
of me wanted to go home and relax for a few hours before getting ready for dinner. We were going to Sawan, the kind of fancy place I imagined you’d go to eat, and I wanted to try out a new look inspired by you. High ponytail, gold stud earrings, a whimsical flick of liquid liner. Another part of me wanted to indulge in my guilty pleasure of trailing you up Bogstadveien to Rosenborggata and observing you agonize over whatever it was that awaited you there. I decided on the latter. I felt unsettled and blue after our session and it helped a little to process while drinking a coffee as I waited for you to finish for the day. You appeared in the doorway, your face guarded and drawn. You looked a little sad, perhaps affected by the fact that you’d spent your day going deep into dark places with people like me. You walked slower than usual, stopping several times to look at your phone. You frowned, typed a response, checked your phone again, typed some more. You crossed the street absentmindedly and a car had to brake hard to avoid you. Its driver shouted at you but you didn’t respond with aggression, or at all, really; you just stood there in the middle of the road, blinking. You raised a hand in apology, or surrender, and stumbled back onto the crowded pavement.

  I wanted to swoop in and pull you into a hug. I wanted to take you home with me and make you tea and sit across from you, me listening to you, for once. I wanted to know what was on your mind. In hindsight, I wondered whether it could have been me. I would have liked to know whether I ever really affected you, Kristina. Whether you brought occasional thoughts of me home with you, into your real life.