Page 427 of Power Play

My voice sounds too small for the room, but everyone is listening.

The counselor leans forward slightly. “Who?”

“His name is Ryan.”

Saying it aloud hurts. I haven’t spoken his name in three weeks because I’m afraid of what will happen once I start.

“He’s the love of my life.”

My throat closes, and I look down at my hands. They’re bare now. I miss my rings, makeup, clothes, and every polished piece of the life I used to wear like armor. When I picture returning to any of it, I become so overwhelmed that my lungs tighten.

I don’t want that life anymore.

I want a healthy one. I only wish wanting it didn’t mean accepting that Ryan might never be inside it.

“I lost him because I was afraid,” I continue. “My fears, anxiety, and all the things I refused to face made decisions for me until they cost me the person I loved most. Ryan knew I was struggling, but he didn’t understand how bad it was because I hid it from him. I lied. I avoided things. Sometimes I reacted in ways that probably made me look irrational because I wouldn’t tell him what was happening inside my head.”

The counselor watches me carefully. “What were you afraid would happen if he knew?”

“He would see me.”

The answer comes too quickly to soften.

“He already saw more than anyone else. He knew when I wasn’t eating enough. He noticed when I hated my body and when I was panicking that people were judging me. He could feel every part of me trying to pull away, but I never gave him the truth. I wanted to ask how he could leave me after knowing me better than anyone.”

Tears blur the circle.

“He didn’t know me, though. I made sure he couldn’t.”

Nobody interrupts.

“I hid so many parts of myself from him. He could sense them and feel the space where they should’ve been, but I never let him see what was inside it. Loving me meant constantly finding another locked door. Ryan kept opening them, and I kept building more behind them.”

The cage is part of every therapy session here. My counselor says my parents built the first bars, but I reinforced them long after I became old enough to recognize what they were doing. My father taught me obedience. My mother taught me how to make that obedience look beautiful. My illness convinced me the cage was safer than disappointing either of them.

Ryan opened the door.

He couldn’t make me walk through it.

“When he needed me to choose him in front of my father, I froze. I watched my father humiliate him, and I couldn’t move. Ryan begged me to stand beside him, but I looked at the floor because I was terrified of what choosing him would cost.”

My voice breaks. I wait until I can continue.

“I understand now that freezing was part of everything I learned to do to survive my father. That explains why it happened. It doesn’t erase what Ryan experienced while it was happening. He needed me, and I made him feel disposable.”

The word hurts more than any other.

Disposable.

Ryan spent his entire life being passed between people who decided whether he was worth keeping. He trusted me with the place that still remembered every locked door, packed bag, and promise that expired as soon as loving him became inconvenient.

Then I became another person who watched him leave.

“I haven’t spoken to him in six weeks,” I say. “I haven’t spoken to my parents either.”

“How does that feel?” the counselor asks.

“I don’t miss talking to them.”