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I underline the sentence and add, Ryan forgave Crystal and still wants nothing from her. Try harder.

A chapter about surrendering control instructs me to accept that I cannot manage another person’s perception of me.

I stare at that one for twenty minutes before closing the book and reorganizing my closet.

The books last longer than meditation but don’t give me the answer either.

By week four, I move on to motivational speakers. I listen while getting dressed, working at the boutique, folding inventory, driving, and pretending the right stranger might arrange familiar words in an order powerful enough to change me.

One man shouts that fear is evidence I am standing near my destiny.

I turn down the volume.

A woman tells me I need to stop shrinking myself to fit rooms I have outgrown.

“That sounds good,” Bliss says from the fitting-room doorway.

“It sounded better before she tried selling me a four-thousand-dollar retreat.”

“Does the retreat have a spa?”

“Yes.”

“We should hear her out.”

“No.”

“Look at you establishing boundaries.”

I throw a measuring tape at her.

During week five, my mother asks me to attend a charity luncheon with her. The invitation arrives disguised as a casual phone call, but I recognize the careful references to people who have asked about me and the boutique. Fifteen months ago, I would have said yes before checking my calendar. Six months ago, I would have explained that treatment taught me to protect my energy and offered three alternate dates to prove the boundary wasn’t rejection.

This time, I still don’t know what the correct response is.

“I’ll think about it,” I tell her.

I spend two days thinking about it, construct seven polite refusals, and attend anyway.

I hate every minute.

The room is too loud, the conversation is empty, and three women ask whether my new figure has made designing clothes “more challenging.” I smile, redirect, and behave so beautifully that my mother tells me she is proud during the drive home.

I cry in the shower that night without understanding why.

By week six, I have four therapists’ opinions, nine annotated books, a canceled meditation subscription, thirty-seven hours of motivational speeches, and absolutely no fucking idea how to become someone Ryan can trust.

I haven’t contacted him.

Every day, I choose not to call, text, email, send a letter, or use Briggs as a covert delivery system when I text him. Ryan asked me not to return with promises made because I was afraid of losing him. Respecting that boundary hurts, but pain isn’t an emergency. I can miss him without making the feeling his responsibility.

That understanding helps.

It doesn’t solve anything.

At the beginning of week seven, I pour Tito’s over ice and sit on my living-room floor. The books remain stacked across the coffee table, their bright covers promising better versions of me in ten easy steps. My therapy notes fill a folder beside them. Every answer I have collected points toward the same dead brother, frightened parents, and terrified little girl who learned perfection might keep everyone alive.

I pour another drink.