Here I am again, on the only-somewhat comfortable couch of my therapist, Francine. I tell myself today will be the day, the day I open up about that thing I can hardly even think about, unless I really don’t want to think about it, then I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve meant to finally talk about it for months but each time she says, “So Mary, what else is going on?” I freeze up, and, having completely forgotten everything else that is going on, tell her nothing else is going on. I always wonder if she can see through my pokerface.

Today will be the day I tell her. I won’t make any more excuses about how complicated of a story it is, or how it’s really not a big deal after all despite how big of a deal it clearly is. Today I will tell her about that time four years ago, oh god here it comes, when I was in a rather desperate situation.

I remember it all so clearly, until I dig deeper and realize it’s all much more like the gesture of a memory. An emotional imprint branded into my skin accompanied by artifacts of light and sound. I was 19 at the time, and I was broke as hell. It didn’t matter what I tried to do to make money, I never seemed to keep it. For most that’s a frighteningly young age to be all out on your own, and beneath my feigned pride I was just that frightened.

Being so desperate and overwhelmed leads one to do reckless things. So I, through a chaotic collaboration of desperation, naievete, and teenage horniness, proposed a shacking up of proportions most other u-haul lesbians would find impressive. Two girls I’d been flirting with a few months on the other side of the country, Phi (24) and Colleen (27), were going to make a grand pilgrimage and come be roommates with me, and oh the relief I felt that things were about to get so much easier, having not the slightest clue what they would bring with them.

Colleen had another girlfriend down in Portland, Kate (29), of considerable internet infamy. When I met her for the first time, I had the same gut feeling screaming at me that this was bad news that I had when Phi and Colline first arrived at my doorstep. You could tell she was looking for a fight, and you could tell her every word was just a little too calculated. Her voice was loud, and she carried herself with a predatory confidence I was already too familiar with. My reticent personality, even at its most wild-animal-backed-into-a-corner strains of ferocity could not resist her. Each time I saw her I wished it would be the last, and after suffering so many visits that I had to begin to count them on my toes, a certain news came.

It was a long story, of far more details than I can recall except that it was, as I would realize later, all a big fat lie. Kate no longer had a place to call home. It was a story I was familiar with, so out of my self-preservation-lacking well of unconditional empathy I summoned the words, which escaped from my mouth before I even had time to realize their meaning, “Why not stay with us for a few weeks?” Oh no, what have I done, what have I—“Really?” she said with a cocky grin that actually said “All according to plan.”

A few weeks became months, and those months felt like nothing short of dental surgery with misapplied anesthetic. Her presence was totalizing, all-encompassing in an already cramped apartment. If I looked over my shoulder she would be there staring over it, into my screen, inviting herself into my business. If I spoke she would twist it into an opportunity to demean me. If I was witnessed experiencing an emotion, that emotion would be called to trial. Her trade was controlling conversation, online and off. In the confines of a small home, it meant I no longer lived there, except in body, which I had given up on.

Multiple failed interventions only escalated my hysteria. As she emphasized her innocence and victimhood writ large I came to doubt the instincts in my gut more and more, and it became easier and easier to give in and submit myself to her treatment. Maybe she was right. I gave up on the idea of asking her to leave, which was already resisted unanimously by her promise to make our financial woes go away, being the daughter of a wealthy surgeon.

It was a sticky hot summer night with me, Colleen and Kate draped over the couch watching something or other. I can’t remember if there was any booze involved, but things started heating up between Colleen and Kate. Tonight though, unlike all other nights, I decided I wouldn’t be left out. I threw myself onto Colleen and wrestled her away from Kate, initiating a game of tug of war.

Up until then the thought of intimacy with Kate repulsed me, but tonight, after being broken down, I gave up. I could always tell she wanted something from me, and tonight I thought, maybe if I gave myself to her she would be nicer to me. Things kept heating up. They escalated in a way that I struggled to realize was real. I had long since abandoned my body for a much more comfortable place elsewhere, so the implications of my initiation were lost on me even as Kate led me by the hand, alone, to a bedroom I wasn’t even sure was mine anymore.

I played along like a doll as sweet nothings were whispered into my ear and insincere confessions were pressed down my throat. This is where my memory is the haziest, where images and sounds are substituted by the imprint of panic and a rapidly repeating thought, “Maybe she’ll be nicer to me.” Maybe she’ll be nicer to me? Maybe she’ll be nicer to me. Maybe she’ll be nicer to me! Maybe she—“Mary, you’ve been staring into space for a while now, is there something you’d like to talk about?”

Only later would I learn that I was far from the only unfortunate teenager to cross her path. Even as I solve the mystery, my place in it is left unresolved, and some days feel realer than others.