Ctrl-Alt-Delete, Small Change, and Purge Overdrive

Between family visiting, medical appointments and spotty internet the past week and a bit, it’s been a struggle to carve out time to read, write and blog. I had this vision of Christmas vacation being relaxed and giving me the freedom to do as much of that as I wanted, but it didn’t turn out that way. Now I’m down to the last weekend before going back to work, going back to normal, and I can’t say I feel refreshed or ready. I despise the feeling that my time does not belong to me and that I can’t spend it how I want to.

Anyway, somehow despite that I did manage to post a few more chapters to Maladaptive (and miraculously, finish A Maladaptive Christmas Interlude before Christmas Day, absolutely wild. I’ve been wanting to blog about that experience, but I kind of don’t know what to say about it. I’m not going to worry about it for now.)

Regarding Maladaptive (Chapter 36: Ctrl-Alt-Delete), at this point in the story, Cara has returned home sans Griffin to Niagara Falls and is processing what happened and figuring out how to move forward. Initially, she’s still in denial to some degree, as her ruminations and daydreams are focused on imagining a reality where she didn’t sleep with Styles, or one in which she’s able to undo her mistake, save her relationships, and resume her L.A. life.

The only small step forward she can take is agreeing to take the ultra-boring job offered to her by her uncle, since her freelance technical writing opportunities (the sex toy manuals) have been revoked. 

She hates it, but it forces her to scrape the bottom of her discipline barrel to make it work, and while she’s not enjoying it, it’s therapeutic to some extent.

I think this is where she’s starting to move from denial into acceptance. She makes a deal with herself that to avoid screwing her life up any further, she’ll work as hard as she can at her new job, but in her off-hours, she’s permitted to daydream her non-working life away if she wants to.

Which takes us to Chapter 37: Small Change, where we see how her daydreaming life is evolving. The island survival fantasy with Styles may have reached its desired climax that she had been building to for months, but she’s not done with it just yet. Now she can use it to hurt Styles back, if only in her imagination. Yes, it’s a self-indulgent, petty revenge fantasy, but it’s all part of her healing process.

We already know that when she’s craving an emotional release, she likes to imagine dark scenarios, so when her daydream takes a turn down the path of her becoming incurably ill with a urinary tract infection (a direct result of having sex with Styles on the island where hygiene practices are compromised and there is no access to antibiotics) it shouldn’t be too much of a shock. Her objective is simple – to indulge in the idea that Styles actually loves her and that their sexual encounter has put her life in jeopardy, forcing him to care for her. This threat to her life means he might end up all alone on the island, and Cara relishes the idea that he’ll be left to feel as alone as he left her in real life.

It also harkens back to their initial meeting at River’s pool party – his attempt to save her from drowning wasn’t needed, so she’s putting him back in that position again, knowing that there is actually nothing he can do to save her from her infection. It’s a bit cruel, actually, in light of what she learned about his first wife Michelle’s accidental death, knowing that he carries with him a feeling of responsibility for not being able to save her.

She’s punishing him, and she’s going to make it as painful for him as possible for her own cathartic purposes. This clears the way for her therapy session with Paige where she admits her mistakes and that she wants to move on but she’s not sure how. Paige suggests she journal her thoughts about her experiences, and Cara gloms onto this idea enthusiastically, wishing she’d thought of it herself.

Chapter 38: Purge Overdrive, has her consciously aware of what she’s doing with the island survival fantasy. She’s still not finished with it yet, and wants to put the nails in the proverbial coffin of this story to clear the way for her to begin her therapeutic journal. In this installment of the fantasy, Styles’ attempts to save Cara from her UTI prove to be futile, as planned, and she dies. Now she’s a ghost, watching him grieve her loss, and grieving along with him the version of herself that she had been shedding slowly all along.

I actually love this for her. Not necessarily the imagined vengeance, or the cruelty of it, but the empathy she’s developing for herself. Being able to recognize that even though she was in a state of transitioning from one version of herself to the next, that that older version of herself had value and deserved compassion. Crying for that version of herself that she is releasing is part of the power that Hannah and Paige have been telling her that she has, even if it feels like the opposite. She’s learning how to love and accept herself in spite of her mistakes.

She starts her journal and the process of writing out her maladaptive daydreams as if they really happened to her ignites her creative energy. She’s not feeling sorry for herself anymore, and her daydreams start to move away from Styles, now to Griffin coming home and the two of them forgiving each other through kinky “tell me what it was like with her/him” sex. She has no control over that in real life, of course, and she might be setting herself up for disappointment in that regard as well, but it’s part of her wish fulfillment daydream purge.

Plus, it’s just nice to see Cara and Griffin together again, even if it’s just in her imagination. I love the idea that the romantic B-story is evolving to be about him, after all.