I was the alibi.
I have gone back, since, to those weeks of exhaustion, and I understand them now in a way I could not then, and the understanding still makes me cold.
Because I was not imagining the tiredness.
It was real.
But it had been arranged — the schedule packed until I had no hours to think, the small constant corrections to my confidence, the way every worry I raised was met with such gentle concern that I began to feel the worry itself was the problem.
A person can be worn down without a single blow, simply by being managed, and I had been managed with genuine artistry.
By the time Christian’s team suggested, so kindly, that I seemed overwhelmed, that perhaps I needed rest, that a quiet clinic before the wedding might do me good, I had been softened into agreeing that yes, something was wrong with me, that I was fragile, that I needed looking after.
That was the genius of it, and the horror.
They did not have to make me unwell.
They only had to make me believe I was, and then offer, tenderly, to take care of the woman they had convinced me I had become.
I walked into that clinic on my own two feet, grateful for the rest, thanking the people who were caging me.
That is the thing I most want anyone reading this to understand about how it is really done.
It rarely looks like force.
