When Alex and I first found the house, I fell in love instantly. The town was beautiful — a quaint little coastal place wrapped in water and sitting right on the edge of Cape Cod. Beaches, boutiques, sunlight on the harbor. It felt like luxury, like a life I didn’t think I’d ever get to have. We settled in and tried to pretend we were normal.
Our relationship wasn’t great, but on the surface we got along perfectly. We did everything together. We moved in sync. We acted like best friends. But underneath that rhythm was a dynamic I didn’t have the language for yet. She was a control freak, a narcissist, and I was her project. Her puppet. My whole life had trained me for that role — first my parents, then my husband — so slipping into it felt familiar. Too familiar.
Nothing about our life was actually normal. She treated me like her personal ATM, dispensing money whenever she snapped her fingers. She tried to turn me into a mini version of herself — hair, nails, clothes, all chosen by her because she said it was “what was best for me.” I thought she was helping me improve. I didn’t realize she was erasing me.
My belongings didn’t fit her aesthetic, so she redecorated the entire house. Even my bedroom. Suddenly my “favorite things” were butterflies, Stitch, and the color purple. There were butterflies pinned to the walls, purple floral arrangements on the tables, a thick purple comforter, soft sheets. She reinvented me in her image, and I thanked her for it. Because that’s what I’d been taught to do — be grateful, be quiet, be easy.
Then came the chaos after her assault on Rowan, and everything shattered. I left the house behind — the pretty town, the curated life, the butterflies, the version of me she had built. That was the end of our friendship, the end of her control, the end of me being molded into someone else’s idea of acceptable.
I walked away from that place and knew I would never go back. Its beauty is stained now, the whole town sitting under a cloud only I can see. The memories there aren’t something I ever want to face again. That place
is off-limits — a chapter closed, a door sealed, a town I’ve exiled from my life.
Some endings are the real beginning,
K.
I'm Still Here. Somehow... 