Comfort Food: A Read Along, Chapters 10 and 11

Kitten's Thoughts:

He didn't have to forcibly remove me from the house because I knew he would and having a breakdown at this point wasn't going to help.  I had belonged to him, and now he was showing me how absolute that was by disposing of me like any other piece of property that had become of little interest.

Just like taking out the trash.  Unbelievable.  But this is a good thing, right?  Emily can go back to her life.  It may take time to rebuild it...  maybe a little therapy would help, but she'll be ok.  She can't have gone through all of this and not be able to rise above it in the end.

She returns home to a shocked mother and father who had just recently (as she heard on the radio while driving) had a memorial service for her.  They gave up on her.  They believed her dead even without a body.  The dullness she felt when she left only intensifies.  "I'm a zombie." she tells the girl at the drive-through window.  Does her Master know what her family did?  Does he want her to feel like a zombie inside?  Why this utter cruelty?  Why should we expect anything else from him?

After being home for a while, she finally begins to see a therapist.  She just wants pills so that she can numb herself even further.  The therapist hesitates since that's not how therapy works.  You have to talk about "things" and "what happened" and "how does that make you feel", but Emily wants none of it.  The therapist, not really getting anywhere in the session by asking those irritating questions, quickly finds the root:

"You want to go back to him."
It wasn't a question.  I bolted up from the couch and stared at her.  Despite understandings of the victim/tormentor relationship, most people refused to accept someone wanting to go back after they were free.
"Yes," I said.

Her therapist assigns her homework...  to keep a journal of the things that Emily believes she can share.  If she does that, then the therapist will consider some pills.  We all know that Emily had already kept a journal, so this should be easy.  Just turn it over to the therapist, and voila!  Pills.  But her therapist does have a question:

Would you like to tell me why it's all written in third person, though?

Emily is clearly distraught, the therapist gives her a prescription.  Before she takes the first pill, Emily goes to the zoo.  She walks through the exhibits of animals in cages and thinks about her situation.  How she needs the cage.

She throws away the pills.

Lola's Thoughts:

I don't know why but these are the chapters that affected me the most. I wanted her to go back to him. The book felt empty without him. How pathetic is that?  But Emily is already making plans to go back. She knows she is free but she writes reverse directions to his house.

Coming close to home she hears on the radio that her parents have given up on her and had a memorial service for her. To everyone but her Master she is dead. But then again he kicked her out. She has no idea where to fit anymore. Sentences like this broke my heart.

In the end the most monstrous thing he did was let me go. 

For whatever reason, he wanted me to be free, and I'd been trained to obey. I could keep going if I thought of it as obedience.

Over months of being with him, my prison had become my sanctuary, and now that I was free, the world was my prison. 

She goes home and her parents freak out. I think that they are cold to her. But I was also putting myself in Emily's shoes.
At the end of chapter 10 the press arrives to find out her survival story...when really Emily feels like she is dying.

A few friends cam by, but I didn't have the energy or will to ask to stay with them. That felt too much like moving on with my life. My life had ended with him. 

After seeing the shrink she thinks of finding her own place and try to get on with life. She gets her pills and goes to the zoo. Then she dumps the pills and decides that she doesn't want to be a part of this life. She wants her life with her master back.