Some Kind of Peace (4 page)

But summer is also demanding. We must partake in happiness and social life, friendly gatherings and vacation. This year, my summer has consisted of a required stay at Mom and Dad’s cabin in the forests of Sörmland. For one week I was forced to listen to my parents’ and siblings’ concerns and fretting, before they dared let me go home again. I could see the fear just behind Mom’s smile and in my sisters’ way of treating me, as if I were made of brittle porcelain. And there was panic right below the surface of my dad’s attempts at conversation. I doubt that anyone really missed me when I finally went home.

The rest of the summer I spent sitting in my garden, looking out over the sea, thinking about taking up diving again. The equipment is here. I have the experience. I miss the feeling of immersing myself in another world—perhaps a better one. Diving doesn’t frighten me, despite all that’s happened, but I don’t have the energy to maintain the commitment that’s required. And I don’t want to have to see old friends from that period of my life.

Instead I puttered aimlessly about the flowerbeds and drank wine,
played with the fat farm cat, Ziggy, who made a home for himself in my house a year or so ago, and endured the endless space of time called summer.

Until now.

It is my fourth day of work. Day four. With four appointments.

Marianne is at the reception desk. A part-time secretary is a luxury we don’t really need but indulge ourselves in anyway. She has only been with us for a year, but her work ethic makes the rest of us look downright lazy. She has transformed the office into a professionally run operation, where the patients always get written notices and the bills get paid on time.

Marianne. How would we manage without her? She grins as I come in, her short blond hair curling at her forehead.

“Siri! Now we’re at full capacity today, too! You have a cancellation at ten o’clock.”

She immediately looks regretful, as if it were her fault that Siv Malmstedt is no longer coming. If I had to guess, Siv has canceled in order to avoid being exposed to a two-hour subway ride. Marianne, who is familiar with the procedures, informs me that a bill has been sent and that Siv still wants her usual time next Thursday.

The practice is small but cozy. We have three consultation rooms, a reception desk, and a small kitchen where we make coffee. At the far end of the practice is a bathroom with a shower. My office is casually called the Green Room, because the walls are painted a soft lime-blossom color, in an effort to evoke a peaceful atmosphere. Otherwise it looks like any therapist’s office: two chairs at an angle to each other, a small table with a hand-blown glass flower vase, and a box of tissues that signals that here you can open up, let go of your feelings, and cry.

A whiteboard is mounted on the wall, which is otherwise decorated with neutral lithographs by the usual suspects. What possibly distinguishes my office from most other therapy offices is the old video camera sitting on its tripod. I record the majority of my sessions. Sometimes so the patient can take a copy of the session tape home, sometimes for my own sake.

The tapes are part of the case records and are stored, locked, in a heavy
green fireproof cabinet in the reception area. Aina claims that my tapes are further evidence of my need for control and complains that there is less and less space in the cabinet for her own records. I reply that she mustn’t worry, since she never writes notes longer than two lines.

She leaves me alone.

I had to make her understand. That was how it all started. I had to make her understand what she had done to me. But how could I explain? That at night the pain twisted like a thousand knives in my guts, knives that work their way up through my belly and chest. As if a ravenous predator were eating me up from inside, a massive parasite with razor-sharp teeth and cold, smooth lightning-fast limbs from which it is impossible to free myself
.

Would I be able to describe the emptiness and the loss? That every sunrise announced that yet another meaningless day was approaching. Meaningless hours filled with equally meaningless activities awaiting nothing. And with every day the distance increased. The distance from Her
.

Would I be able to explain that my dreams were so intense and real that I wept with disappointment when I woke up, bathed in sweat like in a fever?

Can you get someone else to understand something like that anyway? And even if I succeeded, what good would it do?

Really?

“Charlotte, I think we should start by looking at how things have been going for you over the summer. It’s been a long summer break.”

“I think the summer was just fine. I’ll be happy to show you my entries.”

Charlotte Mimer bends over her briefcase and pulls out a folder where the pages of her food diary are in perfect order. I note that as usual she has made all her entries with the same pen and in her signature tidy handwriting. Charlotte hands over the folder to me as she pushes her well-coiffed brown hair behind one ear. I see that she is expectant and proud, and I feel happy for her sake.

“Let’s start by looking at the entries from June.”

This summer I had asked Charlotte to take notes about every meal: where she was, what she ate, and how much. And at the end of each meal she would assess her uneasiness and distress. For an individual with a serious eating disorder, ordinary mealtimes often give rise to strong anxiety; food is associated with fat. To avoid this feeling, certain destructive behaviors develop and may last for years: starvation, vomiting, and excessive exercise. The patient may not even be aware that all this leads to renewed bingeing, and yet the anxiety is so strong and painful that for the moment it doesn’t matter. It’s a vicious cycle.

I pick up Charlotte’s meticulous food diary and look through the entries for June. Regular mealtimes, no high-anxiety estimates after finished meals, no overeating, no vomiting.

“Can you tell me about it?” I ask.

“I don’t know… it just went fine. Suddenly it was… easy.”

Charlotte is about forty years old and successful in business. She works as a marketing manager at a large international company. She has struggled with eating disorders in silence for almost twenty-five years. It was only when her dentist confronted her about the corrosion damage to her teeth that she sought help. She has been in treatment since the end of April and is something of a model patient. Just as she is a perfect marketing manager, she is also the perfect psychotherapy patient. Her major problems seem to stem from the incredibly high demands she places on herself. Charlotte is scared to death of failing. So far we have touched on this only peripherally, working on reducing her bingeing and vomiting. In contrast to Sara Matteus, Charlotte seems to spread energy around her. Her fear of being incompetent or inadequate makes me feel accomplished and capable.

We continue to study Charlotte’s notes. July, August: low anxiety, no vomiting. We find ourselves laughing together, and Charlotte finally gets the praise she so desires, and that she also deserves.

“There was something else, too.”

Charlotte looks hesitant. She squirms in the 1950s-style Lamino chair and, as always when she is worried, she starts wiggling one foot, today clad in a Tod’s loafer. I suspect this is a type of shoe I could never afford.

“Tell me!”

“I don’t know…”

Charlotte suddenly looks as if she is keeping a secret. A secret that she will soon tell me. You see, that’s the way it works: They tell me all their secrets in the little green room.

“I don’t know if it has to do with therapy exactly. I’ve been thinking, you know, about life.”

Charlotte stops herself and a blush creeps up her neck. I realize that it takes a lot of courage for her to bring up what she now wants to say.

“I’ve spent… how many years is it really—good Lord, twenty-five, maybe?—devoting all my time to thinking about food. And about my body. And about my stomach. And about my thighs. And about going to the gym. When I wasn’t doing that, I was working. Work. Body. Food.
I’m the youngest, most successful marketing manager at the whole company, but I have no life. No
real
life. No friends. No
close
friends, anyway. No husband. No children. I’ve been so preoccupied with making myself perfect that I’ve forgotten why I wanted to be perfect. I wanted… to be… loved. I want to be loved. And now it’s too late.”

The tears have burst forth and are running down Charlotte’s blushing cheeks like little streams. She sniffs and takes several tissues from the box. Blows her nose, dries her tears, and cries some more. I push the box across the table toward her and place my hand lightly on her arm.

“Charlotte.” I catch her gaze. “It’s not unusual to feel this way when you’re going through what you are right now… You’ve been handicapped, held back by a severe illness, and now you’re starting to get healthy. Of course there will be insight into the years you’ve missed. It’s not strange. It’s good. What I want to know is why you say it’s too late now.”

She sits silently while inspecting the wall above my head before answering in a cracked voice.

“Old, I’m getting old. And it’s as if I can’t understand it, can’t take it in. It’s like I’m just waiting to… that I’ll be young again.”

“Young again?”

“Well, by spring maybe?” she says and smiles—a crooked, melancholy smile, filled with pain.

I smile back. The thought sounds familiar somehow, as if time were a channel, where it was possible to travel in both directions under controlled circumstances, instead of a waterfall. She shrugs slowly and fixes me with a dejected look.

“Who will want me now… I am… maybe I can’t even have children now.”

Charlotte’s sorrow. Charlotte’s fear. So close to my own. No children. Too late. No husband. No idea. Never again.

I try to collect Charlotte’s thoughts and do something with them. Get her to look at them from outside. Objectively. Assess the level of truth in these assertions. We agree on an assignment for Charlotte to work on, and then her forty-five minutes are over and she takes out a brush,
pulls it through her hair, and somehow manages to collect herself. When she shakes my hand and says good-bye, the sobbing little girl Charlotte Mimer is no longer there. Out of the room walks marketing manager Charlotte Mimer and I, psychotherapist Siri Bergman, stay behind.

I go to the window and look down at the street. Far below me, on the stone pavement of Medborgarplatsen, a group of preschool children walks by. The August sun is shining like it doesn’t have the sense not to. No noise penetrates my office, but when I close my eyes I can imagine how the children’s voices sound down there. A quiet feeling that I cannot identify fills my chest. Maybe it’s sorrow, maybe it’s only calm and emptiness.

Evening.

There is a ritual I have to perform every evening. Almost without exception, I bring work home with me. When it’s finished, I go for a swim in the sea. When it’s summer I try to take the opportunity to swim a little. Then I prepare dinner.