They began speaking about me as if I weren't there.
Not immediately. Not obviously. It started with lowered voices, glances exchanged just out of my line of sight, decisions presented as conclusions rather than questions. I noticed it first in the pauses-those small hesitations before someone answered me, as if checking an internal script.
Vivienne stopped asking how I felt.
Instead, she asked how I was coping.
She brought groceries I hadn't requested, meals pre-portioned and bland. She rearranged my kitchen so that sharp objects were placed higher, harder to reach. When I pointed it out, she smiled too quickly.
"I just want you safe," she said.
Safe. From what?
She began accompanying me everywhere. If I declined, she grew quiet, wounded in a way that made refusal feel cruel. I learned that resistance cost more energy than compliance.
Julian stopped responding to my messages.
That hurt more than I expected. Not because I needed his reassurance-but because his silence felt like confirmation that the story had been finalized without me. I imagined them together, talking in calm voices about my condition, agreeing on what was best.
I was becoming an inconvenience.
One afternoon, she arrived with a folder.
"I found someone," she said, setting it on the table between us. "A specialist."
I didn't open it. "I don't need one."
She sat across from me, folding her hands. The posture again. Always that posture.
"This isn't a punishment," she said. "It's support."
"For who?" I asked.
She flinched. "For you."
The room felt smaller suddenly, the walls pressing inward. I stood, needing space, but Vivienne stood too-blocking the path to the door without touching me.
"You're not well," she said.
There it was. Plain. Undeniable.
"I'm grieving," I replied. "There's a difference."
She shook her head. "You're clinging to something that was never real."
The words struck harder than any accusation.
"You don't get to decide that," I said.
She sighed, rubbing her temples. "I'm trying to save you."
Save me from what-myself?
That night, I stopped writing in my journal.
Not because I had nothing to say-but because I began to suspect it was being read.
The dreams changed again.
No longer visions of past lives or sacred rooms. Now they were procedural. Clinical. I dreamed of white corridors and doors that locked from the outside. Of voices discussing me in the third person while I lay still, compliant, invisible.
In one dream, I screamed until my throat bled-but no sound came out.
I woke gasping, my chest tight, my stomach aching with a hollow that felt unbearable. I pressed my palm there and whispered apologies I didn't understand.
The next morning, Vivienne told me we were going on a short trip.
"A change of environment," she said brightly. "It'll help."
I stared at the packed bag by the door. I didn't remember agreeing to this.
"Where?" I asked.
She hesitated. Just for a second.
"Somewhere quiet."
My heart began to race.
"I'm not going," I said.
She smiled, and for the first time, there was no warmth in it.
"You are," she said. "I've already spoken to them."
Them.
That word fractured something fundamental.
I backed away slowly, my mind racing, searching for exits-for proof, for allies, for anything that still belonged to me. She stepped closer, her voice low now, urgent.
"Please," she said. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be."
In that moment, I understood something with terrifying clarity:
Whatever I did next would be remembered as evidence.
I looked at her-my oldest friend, my self-appointed guardian-and realized that love, when convinced of its own righteousness, could become indistinguishable from cruelty.
That night, I didn't dream at all.
Which frightened me more than anything that had come before.