Room Empty

by Sarah Mussi

  Kerstin adjusts her skirt very deliberately. ‘And we have to be aware of their agenda.’

  That use of the word ‘we’! Such an insidious attempt to plant her ideas inside my head.

  ‘It’s actually very dangerous to poke about and stir things up, especially given the spotlight on police practices and child abuse cases at the moment.’

  Crikey. We’re in some kind of conspiracy theory!

  And she’s the sane one.

  I blink.

  Rapidly.

  Let me get this right: she can’t help me in case her inquiries about my past are seen as part of a dangerous, countrywide, political witch-hunt against the police by anti-child-abuse campaigners?

  Wow! Ten out of ten for the most original excuse of the year!

  Checkmate.

  I surrender.

  ‘Reality isn’t always fair – you can’t expect it to be,’ she carries on. ‘Friends should be able to investigate freely for you but it’s not always possible.’

  Watch out! Dodge!

  The ‘we’ word is small but deadly.

  ‘I’ve given this a lot of thought and we don’t live in a free world so we have to play the game sensibly. There are loads of other things, as your friend, I can do to support you. You know I’ve always supported you. Think of all those aphorisms.’

  Reproachful silence.

  I’m lost. I can’t get my head around this.

  Kerstin glances down at a notepad, concealed inside her massive designer shoulder bag.

  ‘And to show you that I don’t hold any grudges, I’ve created some more aphorisms for you. And a new list of all your fabulous qualities.’

  I give up. I let the rubber suit bounce everything off me. At the end of the day, she wasn’t prepared to do a little sleuthing for me, so everything she says is merely her squirming, trying to shed the blame.

  God bless diving suits.

  She rips a page out and slaps it down in front of me. ‘Darling, you have to think twice before you lash out at people.’

  Oh no. It’s not over.

  Here it comes: the atom bomb. Having succeeded at rationalizing her lack of support, she’s now going to annihilate me.

  Classic defensive Cluster B, manipulative thinking. Thank God for Judith’s Cognitive Behavioural Therapy otherwise I’d never have noticed it in time.

  I give up. I pick up the plate of biscuits and treats and offer her one. Five goodies with a minimum of 130 calories each. And I’m immensely pleased when she chooses the cream-topped, triple-chocolate 488 total calorie muffin.

  I’m now officially at the bottom of the ocean.

  ‘I’m not asking for you to hide your feelings from me. We want honesty and openness; we need vibrant, genuine conversation and communication. But you need to think about how easy it is to create a misunderstanding.’

  Love that pronoun shift.

  From ‘I’ to ‘we’.

  Then on to ‘you’.

  Shift the pronoun. Shift the blame

  And Heaven spare me from that unrelenting royal WE.’

  Why not speak for the whole goddamn world while you’re at it, Kerstin?

  Speak for everybody.

  HELLO. I’m Kerstin. I’m The Voice Of The Universe. LISTEN UP.

  ‘Given the fragile nature of your relationships in general – I mean, you being in here – and that I’m probably the last friend you’ve got . . .’

  Oooh, a shower of napalm. The last friend I’ve got!

  ‘I know you didn’t mean to upset me, but I was upset and my friendship with you could have been harmed.’

  Wow. She knew I didn’t mean to upset her. Thanks. She really is clairvoyant! That’s awesome.

  And lest the missiles haven’t spattered me enough, or I forget how grateful I should be for forgiving friends like her who visit me in an ‘institution’, she adds, ‘I’m not very comfortable being so direct and honest with you, darling. And I’m sorry if our little chat is distressing. I’m just saying these things because I feel I need to and because I love you. And I’m visiting you because I love you, and I know you’re ill. Saying these things isn’t easy – I had to have a ciggie before I came, when I was trying to give up, just in order to have the courage. To be really honest with you, I just hate confrontations. You might take this very badly and refuse to see me ever again, but I’m totally doing this in your own best interests. I hope you know that – and that I love you.’

  I hate the love card.

  I hate the honey-coloured bullets most of all, especially when they are laced with toxic subtext.

  I’m finding it very hard to observe and not absorb.

  My rubber suit has grown thin. I’m breathless. I must come up from the bottom of the ocean and find real air. I wonder if I’ve visited with her long enough for my therapists to believe I’m making progress.

  I need to find Fletcher.

  I need to wash Kerstin off me.

  But the bullets just keep coming.

  ‘I’ve always been there for you in so many ways, freely giving up my spare time to help you, and it’s not nice to be told that I’m a rubbish friend. I think you need to pause sometimes and realize the damage you do to those who love you when you say such truly ungrateful and horrible things.’ There are tears in her eyes.

  I look out of the window.

  Oh, Fletch. I’m so sorry. I really did say horrible things to you.

  Is this what I have to get used to? Out there? The darkness is seeping in through my diving suit. I’m not sure I can ever get back out into the light.

  At the very bottom of the garden, the bushes rustle, leaves are teased apart and from deep inside the greenery the Alien winks at me.

  His wink says: Go on, try the Real World. See if it’s better than what we have. See if you can handle it alone without your little monster.

  Kerstin jolts me back into the conservatory, her aggression barely skimmed over with pleasantries.

  ‘Don’t you dare attack me again and suggest I don’t care about your recovery!’ She’s getting very shrill. ‘Take the hint, Dani. I have my reasons for not doing your research. And don’t ever try to guilt me by saying “What goes around comes around.” ’

  Whoa.

  She snaps her holdall to. Gives me a quick plastic smile. ‘That’s all, darling. I’ve said enough. It’s up to you now how you take it, but I strongly urge you to think hard.’

  Thank God she’s making ending-type remarks. Thank God she’s going to go.

  I smile brightly.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’

  Behind the heavy rubber mouthpiece, I stick my tongue out at her.

  Then I wonder if she really is clairvoyant and can see through my diving mask.

  Step Nine

  Injure Them

  49

  Where is Fletcher?

  Kerstin’s visit was far too long. It’s morning Circle Time now. There is no way I can climb five flights of stairs to go looking. I text him for the third time.

  Where the frick are you? I’ve said I’m sorry. I need to see you. Get here. CT is about to start.

  Around me the others try not to fidget. We wait for Tony to get going.

  My heart is pounding.

  Fletcher has to come.

  His chair is empty.

  I swear I’ll never see Kerstin again.

  This is madness.

  Despite Tony and all the others, I openly text Fletcher.

  GET HERE. I’M SORRY. I HAVE NEWS. IT’S ALL GOING TO BE OK.

  ‘Today we’re going to talk about addiction and the lost self.’ Tony frowns slightly at me. ‘We have a guest speaker in today, especially to talk us through this topic. Her name is Miriam Jaeger and we welcome her to our circle.’

  I look across at the strange new woman. I try to overcome my instant dislike of her. She’s sitting in the chair that Carmen used to sit in.

  ‘Hi, my name is Miriam. I am an addict,’ she says.

  ‘Hi, Miria
m,’ we respond.

  I look at the door. I strain my ears. He must come. I try to see if I can hear him. Fletcher?

  ‘Tony has kindly invited me here so that I can share with you my model of thinking about recovery.’

  ‘Thank you, Miriam,’ we all chorus.

  ‘We’re going to be talking about how, as addicts, we cannot act from our innate selves, but organize our thinking around another person, a substance or a process. About how we are, in fact, never really filled up. My feeling is that this emptiness is the result of clinical codependency and it underlies all addiction.’

  Where is he?

  ‘Essentially codependency is a mental-health condition. I’m sure you’re all aware of its medical definitions and won’t confuse it with just being dependent on another or interdependent with another. Neither should the term be confused with enabling another, nor even with two people dealing with their needs by relying on and interacting perhaps unhealthily with one another.’

  ‘Yeah, course not,’ says Lee, grinning at everyone.

  ‘We must face our codependent selves, developed as a response to our childhood traumas, before we can deal with our addictions,’ continues Miriam.

  I slide my hand into my pocket, pull out my mobile – just a fraction so nobody can see – and find his number and press ‘call’.

  ‘I’m going to give you a visual model to help you understand what it is that we as addicts must face. Try to think of an onion. At the core of the onion is the real self. Due to poor or abusive child-rearing practices, this real self is encased by layers of shame-based thinking, a critical inner voice which tells us that we’re failures – that we’re not good enough, not worthy enough, don’t try hard enough. With every year we add more layers of self-hating talk.’

  I glance down at my phone.

  It’s stopped dialling. It offers me a choice of ‘call back’ or ‘voicemail’. I slip it back into my pocket.

  ‘This critical self, covered by onion layers, hides its shame behind a mask. The mask is the projection of the self that we present to the outer world: the self that laughs and smiles, hiding our real selves who aren’t smiling, who definitely aren’t laughing and who are far too scared to show their true colours.’

  Where is he?

  ‘On the very surface of the onion is the perfect self. The perfect self is the self that we would like to be, that self we feel we should have been and that we most definitely are not.’

  I try to think of the onion.

  I want to speak to Fletcher.

  I hate onions. It’s always onions, isn’t it? It’s a good job I’ve never wanted to eat onion rings. If I had wanted to eat them, my critical self would not have allowed me to. I’m going to hate onions for ever. I allow my perfect self to smile at that.

  Fletcher has really blown it now. This is the third time he’s missed Circle Time.

  Miriam continues, ‘Clinical codependency is therefore at the heart of all addiction. And if it goes untreated, like any disease, it will leave the self an empty shell which is then vulnerable to being filled up by addictive processes. Think of it like a room inside you. An empty room. Filled with darkness.’

  An empty room.

  The Alien is nodding at me, mouthing out, ‘BLACK HOLE.’

  Fletch? I need you.

  ‘There will be symptoms of denial – denial of the addiction, denial of feelings of shame – and other painful emotions like fear, anxiety, resentment, envy and vengefulness. And of course there will be poor boundaries and that will lead to an overwhelming desire to control. I’ll say that again: control. Because control is the only tool that the codependent has to try to reorder the world outside themselves so that they don’t have to face their own shame.’

  The Alien mouths, ‘SUCKS YOU IN.’

  Miriam smiles at us around the circle.

  I mouth back, ‘SUCKS TO YOU.’

  Obviously nobody has told her about crosstalk. Or perhaps crosstalk doesn’t exist when you have finally become your perfect self.

  The Alien pulls a sad face.

  Miriam pauses as her smile spotlights us one by one. I’m beginning to feel her talk is rather scripted. She has obviously gone round to a lot of addiction recovery centres and shone the same beaming smile on many other recovering addicts.

  I try not to dislike her any more than I do already. Maybe it’s all because she’s sat in Carmen’s chair. My less-than-perfect self jumps up and down and says, You’re in denial – that’s why you don’t like her.

  My inner critic shouts: You are a codependent anorexic addict. Fletcher hates you. Kerstin hates you.

  ‘In short, you codependents are always seeking to change the world rather than yourselves,’ she continues, ‘because your happiness and your feelings about yourself are located outside yourself.’

  I’m beginning to get rather tired of all this You, You, You Stuff.

  ‘Your inner script may run something like this: I’ve got to make sure that everybody likes me. I must never say “no” and I must please everyone all the time. I’ve got to be the prettiest/most interesting/kindest/coolest person in the room/on the street/in the universe. That is codependency.’

  I think I could be seriously irritated with Miriam Jaeger.

  If I had the energy.

  She beams round at us again. An empty beam, devoid of feeling.

  A cold snake slithers down my spine.

  ‘The real problem comes when you think you know what other people think – and you think you can control it. So you choose fashions, lose weight, have the latest phone in an attempt to control what others think of you, because you imagine you know what they think of such things.’

  Miriam stands up and nods at each of us in clockwise order. ‘You practise impression management. You search for approval. You fear abandonment. You have low self-esteem. No self-love. And porous ego boundaries.’

  Miriam sits down.

  The snake farts and a foul smell fills the room.

  Miriam does more crosstalk. She smiles around the circle.

  We all wait.

  I realize the snake is actually the Alien in disguise.

  We still wait.

  Politely.

  Is that it? Just an exercise in defining how crap we are? What about the recovery bit? Isn’t she going to tell us how we can access the real self, break through, smash into smithereens all the fakery we’ve built up and become our perfect selves – like she has?

  I don’t get it and I don’t want to. I want to go and find Fletcher. His seat stares reproachfully back at me.

  Fletcher, you idiot. Why aren’t you here?

  But now she’s pointed out how crap we all are, my critical inner-self voice starts on at me with a vengeance.

  It’s all your fault he’s not here.

  You’re selfish.

  If you hadn’t been so unkind, he would be here.

  You’re mean.

  Kerstin was right.

  You’re manipulative.

  You’re nasty. Of course you are.

  You wanted to feast on his pain.

  You wanted to see him crumble.

  You hauled yourself up the stairs to give yourself an ego boost.

  You wanted to break him.

  You’re a monster.

  You’re a bigger monster than the Alien you carry around.

  I can’t stop the voice, and it won’t let me off the hook, and I know everything that is going to happen will be my fault – my responsibility – and it will all be terrible.

  ‘JUST GOT TO SUCK IT UP THEN,’ smirks the Alien.

  50

  Immediately I think of strategies.

  If I could get even up to three points I might have a chance of silencing the voice. Lunch hasn’t happened yet and there’s still teatime and supper. If I could get three points, I could feel better about myself.

  The Alien starts giggling. He mouths out, ‘That’s all you really care about, isn’t it? Feeling fabulous? You don’t
care at all about what’s happening to poor Fletcher.’

  I can’t stand it any more.

  I get up.

  I run out of the room.

  We’re not supposed to do that – sometimes if you leave Circle Time before you’ve been dismissed it counts as a strike.

  But I don’t care.

  I’ve got to find Fletcher.

  I don’t want to do strategies any more.

  I must make him see I’m genuinely sorry.

  I must find him and force him to come back to Circle Time – before it ends.

  We can face it together. We can still be OK.

  Stupid Miriam. I hate Carmen. I hate the world. My heart is pounding like I’m running a marathon. My legs are so weak. I race through the front lobby. I don’t care if Judith comes out of her office looking astonished. I glance at her door as I take a corner in the hall. It’s slightly ajar. She’s interviewing a new client. It won’t look good if one of us is having a meltdown.

  I don’t care.

  I need to find Fletcher.

  This isn’t about Judith.

  The newcomer will have to take their chances. I don’t even know if they’ll sign up to the programme anyway.

  I’ve got to shut my inner critic up. It’s beating on me so hard. Just think about Fletcher.

  Through the corridors and the stairwells, I hear Carmen shrieking with laughter.

  I hear Tony’s voice. Poor Tony. He was the only one who tried to stop Fletcher.

  He was the only one who tried to be real.

  If I run up five full flights of stairs that will be suicide.

  I know it’s dangerous.

  I know it’s breaking the rules.

  I’ll get kicked out.

  The lift is strictly out of bounds.

  I take the lift.

  I make it to Fletcher’s room. I knock on the door. The door creaks open. I burst in. I look around.

  There’s no one there. No stuff. Even Fletcher’s smelly pile of shoes in the corner has gone. The windows are wide open. I can’t get my brain around it.

  What’s happened?

  Have I gone into the wrong room by mistake?

  One of the house staff comes in. She’s carrying a pile of folded laundry.

  ‘Where’s Fletcher?’ I say. ‘What have you done with him?’

  ‘Fletcher?’ she says, surprised.

  ‘Yes! Fletcher!’