“My life is perfect.”
    The sofa felt foreign, oppressive, and she forced herself to roll off.  She gazed around the apartment, noting the wall with the shelves where she’d kept her entire life for so long.  Now, there were no shelves.  An abstract painting hung there, failing utterly to distract from the marks where the shelves had been screwed into the walls.  She smiled and stuck a pinky into one of the holes.  She sipped the glass of scotch delicately.
    “My life is perfect,” she repeated softly.
    The liquor was bitter, and she was glad of it.  It reminded her of places she would never go again.  She would never be happy.  She knew that, deep down.  It didn’t bother her.  She would never be fulfilled.  That didn’t bother her either.  She understood that existing wasn’t about being happy or fulfilled.  It was about existing, about making the effort to exist.  Making the effort was all that mattered.
    Her work wiped away all the memories of that dark set of yesterdays.  Finding the social work did things to her, made her stop caring about those shelves.  She didn’t need the shelves to feel like her life mattered.  Knowing that she had helped the helpless was enough.
    She hated that phrase.  It was his phrase.
    Her life was perfect.  She was complete, a whole person.  Yet, one darkness remained, and it refused to let go of her.  She stared at the couch in disgust.  The dreams had first come to her when she’d fallen asleep on that couch once long ago.  Even when she awoke, the dreams clung to her like the mist of an early morning.  The dreams emptied her of what contentment she knew, wreaked havoc with her insides.  The control she so cherished about herself was stripped from her.
    The newness of her life, a life without shelves and honors, had been enough to cleanse the destructive associations from the rest of her apartment.  The new door frame, the shower, the bathroom, the couch, the living room, and everything that once held even a small trace of that dark essence was clean to her.  She was free from it everywhere she went, even in her place of refuge, and everything she touched was harmless, but she could not escape the dreams.  She could not flush him out of her mind.
    The scotch splattered all over the abstract painting, and shards of glass flew everywhere.  She felt her knees give out, and she sank onto the cold floor, shaking with rage and frustration.

    “I hate you!” she shrieks.  The shrillness of her own voice holds no power.  It is empty sound.
    “I know,” he whispers, his brows furrowed in guilt and concern. “I don’t blame you.”
    “And why not?  Why don’t you blame me?” She has him by the lapels of his coat, and she would have shook him violently if her arms had any strength left in them.
    “Because it’s not your fault.  None of it was your fault, Kate.” He stares at her, unrelenting, with dark, moistened eyes.
    “It should be!  Why don’t you hate me?” She chokes on her own bitter tears, ready to fall in an exhausted heap on the floor.
    He catches her before she even starts to fall.  His arms are strong and gentle, and all she wants to do is fight him.  She struggles vainly, trying to hit him.
    “Please, just leave me alone,” she whispers in a voice not her own.  It is the voice of desperation, of deep longing that will never be satisfied.
    “Why?”
    “You can’t be here, you shouldn’t be here...I can’t be with you, I can’t--”
    “Why?” he presses, tightening his hold on her.
    “Because I need you!” she shouts, the sobs almost overwhelming her.  “Because I need you and you’ve never needed me!  Because--because, God damn you, I--and you’ll never--ever- because you’re already gone.”
    “I’m here.  I’m not leaving.  I want to help you.  Let me help you.  Let me--”
    “I am so sick of letting you!” she says, pushing away from him with a surge of new energy.  “I want you out of my life forever, but you keep coming back!  Just get away from me.”
    He steps closer to her, backing her against the wall.  His dark eyes are too intense, and she looks away.
    “I’m not leaving you,” he says, voice thick with emotion.  “I’m never leaving you ever again.  I need you.”
    He says the words she’s waited for so long to hear, and she can’t bring herself to believe it.  Even as he takes her face in his cool hands and begins to kiss away her tears, she doubts.  And when she feels his lips brush hers, the pain was never greater.

    “My life is perfect,” Kate said to herself as she gathered up the pieces of broken glass.  “And I hate you.”
    The shards of glass safely in the trash, she turned on the television.  Anything to stay awake.