VIRAGO

Chapter 6

      I'd skimmed the surface with Brahm; it was time to move things on, develop a rapport that increased my meaningfulness to him. Searching for something I may never find elongates my exhaustion and I find myself yearning for days when I can take myself off the grid. To unplug, recharge my batteries and re energise for the fight. For that is how I've come to know love over the years, as a battle most often lost. This time, there must be a different outcome; I will not stop until I find what I came for. This time round, I brought my triple A game.

He reveals more of himself during our work powwows than he realises. I've learnt he has a brother, one that he cries over most nights. The brain injury; sustained during a high speed motorcycle crash has erased parts of his memory. It's muddied the waters for his sibling, which leads to emotionally charged behaviour. I; rather flippantly, expressed my belief that I'd rather enjoy dropping a few chapters from my life, to which Brahm was incredulous.

    'His short term memory is shot. He eats, within three minutes he has no recollection of having had that food. His stomach believes the command his brain is sending, that he is starving. And so he eats again, then forgets, on repeat.'

This is terrifying news to me, still battle weary from an existence where I have struggled to consume one solitary meal each day. The concept, that I could forget ingesting hundreds of calories again, multiple times triggers my internal alarm. There was a period after Meghan was born when I felt I'd reached the end of my natural life, ensnared in a net between two extremes; gluttony and starvation. Blocks of time where I felt nothing but shame and utter disgust at who I was; surviving a series of powerful experiences, which led me to a state of monumental change. In my early teens, I took to food consoling; it became my hug in a mug, or rather my date on a plate. And boy did I like my beau's large, preferably with oodles of saturated fat. I didn't need a psychologist to identify the root cause of my comfort seeking lay with my parents; don't all childhood traumas manifest in the same way?

Eating helped me avoid who I really was; unloved and pointless. Whilst I was powerless to stop the chain of events happening around me, food was something I could control, a task I could be good at. So good in fact, I compiled a journal full of helpful hints on how to excel at the binge, purge cycle. It's an idea I'd like to claim credit for, alas; I simply reproduced the material that shoved me up my first rung of the ladder. Only better. Some years later, my research on stealth tips topped the Covert Bulimia Chatroom for weeks, as did my Guide to Disguise segment. Achievements that left me feeling worthy, finally like a someone.

Brahm tells me he visits his brother most evenings after work, suggests I head out there with him one time. The idea holds no appeal until I consider the opportunity it would provide; time alone with him away from the Facility. There is so much more I want to learn about him, about his work here. So I accept.

The following day is a blur of back to back interviews. Now my role has settled around me, I find myself looking forward to particular meetings more intensely than others, natural curiosity at which treatment the client has selected, which demons drive them forward. What intrigues me the most is their theme song, the back story which led them up the path to our door.

I found my first two interviews, whilst fulfilling for the attendees, to be unremarkable. The name demarking the space of the two o'clock appointment gave me a little rush. So far each client I'd screened were products of the open day, tagged with some memory of our physical meeting. This lady had yet to visit our premises. She held the esteemed position of being our first wealth whisper. A client at the open day suggested the term; I rather enjoyed watching Lars's nose crinkle upward with derision. In what began as innocuous dialogue, the client was expressing disdain for what she termed the vulgarity of the 'suburban bourgeois'; those who have a little and showcase a lot.