Chapter 8
It was six or so months ago that I first approached Sandra about her place of employment, and she saw through me immediately.
“What have you heard?” she asked me, that deep groove between her eyebrows showing as she chugged the last of the beer in her glass.
I told her about the Reddit post I’d found, and how the cops had confirmed that someone named Susannah Wallin had been reported missing in November of last year but that they’d refused to show me a police report or a picture.
I’d managed to track down a couple of articles about Susannah Wallin from back in the day that seemed to confirm her existence: one about her achievements as a young rising softball star, with a picture of a beaming, white teenage girl with pigtails and braces, holding a glove in one hand and a trophy in the other, and one about the very same Susannah Wallin six years later as one of the top-performing saleswomen in what was clearly a pyramid scheme.
By that point, she’d lost the braces and dyed her hair a deep caramel, her young face caked in products from the MLM she was apparently excelling in.
She looked like any young woman in any random town in Sweden; she could have been anyone or no one. Still, there was a sweetness to her smile, and something else, in both pictures, both articles, like a sort of yearning. A desperation to be seen, recognized. Loved.
I showed Sandra the pictures I’d found, and she shook her head.
“These are too old. This last one is from 2016. Anything more current? Social media?”
I told her there was no social media. No Instagram, no TikTok, no Facebook, no Twitter, no LinkedIn. It was like she’d been wiped from the internet.
Sandra looked troubled.
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything about this girl, specifically. But, Christ … the way that place is run. What they do to those women. It’s haunting. It’s like they come out different people. And not in a good way.”
She told me about the patients who had breakdowns and left, midweek, mute and with reddened eyes. She told me about the patients who’d come back, over and over again, convinced that all they needed, more than their jobs, or houses, or children, was just one more week at Himlafall.
And she told me about the patients who’d arrive at the exercise sessions quiet, and sluggish, as though they’d taken something. Or had been given something.
“I’ve tried talking to the other employees about it. But they won’t acknowledge it. Or maybe they just don’t stick around long enough to notice, or care. The whole staff has been cycled out twice in the time I’ve been there, and it’s been less than a year.”
At the end of the evening, I’d asked her if she’d be willing to help me. Willing to work with me on taking down Himlafall, if I could come up with a referral and enough money to secure a spot.
And she’d said yes.
It was the final piece of the puzzle. The domino that led to me coming here.
Last night, I told Armin that he didn’t have to worry about me being here. That I’d have Sandra, and that we’d take care of each other.
The only source of light in the cabin is the small, cold rectangle of the phone screen, and as it goes to sleep, I find myself sitting in the soft, blue dark, the faint smell of pine soap and laundry detergent stinging my nostrils.
I pull out the recorder from my pocket and rewind. It takes me a while to find the right spot on the recording.
I hear my own voice, harsher and more nasally than I would have thought, and I wince slightly at the sound of it:
“It was recommended to me by a former patient. Susannah Wallin?”
Silence.
I hear the sound of fabric shifting, and a hissing, like a whisper. Belinda. Then Anna’s voice, yelling about brownies.
I rewind again. Turn the volume all the way up, until I can feel the crackling of the auditory artifacts in my back teeth.
“… Susannah Wallin?”
A beat. And then I can only just make out:
“… lying. Or … about it.”
Belinda’s whisper, quick and harsh.
I replay it three more times.
Finally, I’m sure I’m making it out correctly.
“She’s lying. Or joking. Don’t worry about it.”
Sitting there, on the floor, my legs going numb from the cold wooden planks underneath me, I can feel my breath shortening, both in fear and in excitement.
Because how would Belinda know I was lying?
If she didn’t know there was no possible way Susannah Wallin could have told me about the clinic?
If she didn’t know that Susannah Wallin couldn’t have told me anything at all?
FREUD’S EX-GIRLFRIEND: A PSYCHOLOGIST’S GUIDE TO brEAK-UPS
pg. 157
Chapter 16: “So now what?”
You have gone through all the steps, and you have executed on them perfectly.
You have deleted all the pictures of the two of you together.
You have burned, donated, or simply thrown out all the mementos from your relationship.
You have picked up two new hobbies, and gotten quite good at them.
You are going out with friends three nights a week, you have started doing Pilates, and you have managed to dodge the compulsion to cut break-up bangs.
(Because, let us be real for a second: If bangs were a good idea, you would already have them. Never make a radical hair decision when you are a fresh singleton.)
But still, you cannot. Stop. Thinking about them.
Every night, whether freshly showered from a vigorous session at the gym or slightly tipsy from too many dirty martinis with your friends, they show up, haunting your thoughts in between waking and dreaming.
And even worse than that, despite the fact that, on the surface, you look happier than ever, to the point that your friends and family are talking among themselves about how well you are handling everything, you are not.
You are sad. You are lonely. And you feel, somehow, as though you have done something wrong.
You cannot stop thinking about where it all went wrong. You run the same scenarios in your head, over and over, tweaking them slightly every time, hoping for a different outcome.
If only you had made a bigger fuss over their birthday.
If only you had kept in better shape.
If only you had spent more time with their friends.
If only you had initiated sex more.
In her 2001 article in Linguistic Psychology, “Ifs and Buts: The Destructive Potential of Potentialities,” Dr. Emilie Steinfeld argued that the words “if only” are the single most potent tool for psychological self-flagellation we possess.
Dr. Steinfeld described the process of trying to right the past as a computer stuck in a loop; as long as the brain cannot find a solution to a problem, it will keep trying new points of attack, even when the problem is long in the past. This locks us in a vicious cycle of revisiting difficult or traumatic points in our past, both in our minds and in our actions.
Functionally speaking, your brain is stuck.
Dr. Steinfeld suggested in her article that the solution to the problem was to replace “if only I had” with “next time, I will,” as a way of teaching your brain to differentiate the past from the future.
But despite her enduring genius, I have to confess that I disagree with Dr. Steinfeld on this point.
Instead of replacing “if only” with “next time,” I suggest shifting the focus.
When you start thinking about all the mistakes you feel you made, and all the areas where you did not measure up, try to instead shift your focus to all the ways your partner failed you. All the ways they did not fulfill you. All the ways they let you down.
It is easy to think back to someone in our past and view them through the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia.
But if your ex was the perfect person for you, they would not have hurt you.
That is important to remember. The first criteria for “the one” is that they want to be with you, and second is that they want to treat you the way you deserve to be treated.
Would paying more attention to their interests have made them appreciate the uniqueness of you? Would initiating more in bed have made them pay attention to your needs? Would any of it truly have made you happy?
You are the main character in your own life, and your journey is your own. By allowing someone who is no longer in your life to take up space in your mind, you are sidelining yourself, as so many of us so often do.
Do not let sadness and regret force you to question yourself. By rehashing the wounds of the past, over and over, you are preventing yourself from moving on.
What if nothing could have changed? What if nothing should have changed?
Or what if—and stay with me, here—you did not do anything wrong?
We are going to discuss the healing power of anger in a few chapters. But for now, I want you to just sit with this idea for a few seconds. Finish reading this chapter, and then put the book (or Kindle) down.
Close your eyes.
Breathe in deep.
Find those thoughts that have been swirling in your mind, late at night, when you are lying in your bed and sleep evades you.
If only, if only, if only.
Focus on them.
And then erase them. And replace them.
I am not responsible for their pain.
I did not do anything wrong.
Their happiness is not, and never was, my responsibility.