I didn’t have a choice.

After I got out of the hospital last year, in the early summer, I went to my court hearing in the city, wearing my most responsible, noncrazy clothes, and while I waited for my name to be called, I thought of the first time I’d ever seen Patrick, in Noosa. I was sitting in a workshop on “Ecologically Friendly Building Design” and he came in late, looking for a seat. I saw his eyes scan the room, and I thought, Sit next to me. And his eyes caught mine and he smiled.

That was the beginning and this was the end.

It was over and done with in a remarkably short time. I didn’t contest the AVO, and I pleaded guilty to the criminal charge of break and enter. I was given a one-year good behavior bond on the condition that I undertook psychological counseling.

My psychiatrist never said much, just let me drone on and on, but when she did talk, I felt like I was a butterfly being pinned to a page. In the beginning it was always about Patrick.

“How do you think Patrick felt when you kept ringing him?”

“What do you think was going through Patrick’s mind when you turned up that day?”

“Do you think Patrick was frightened that night?”

It was ironic that I’d spent the last three years doing nothing but thinking about Patrick, and yet I hadn’t really thought about him at all.

“I was never violent,” I’d say.

“Violence isn’t just physical,” she’d say. “You took away all his power.”

“It was never about power. I loved him. I just wanted to get back together.”

“Think about it, Saskia.”

She wouldn’t let me get away with anything. It was like she was making me stand in front of a mirror, and I’d keep trying to turn around and look the other way, and each time I did she would take me by the shoulders and turn me back around to face the mirror again. And when I put my hands over my eyes, she’d gently remove them and put them back by my side.

And finally, I stood still and looked.

It wasn’t very enjoyable.

She listed, in a dry, clinical voice, the possible impact of my behavior on Patrick: anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress.

“I really don’t think—” I said, and then I stopped.

“It’s very well documented,” she said.

“Fancy that,” I said.

“You knew this,” she said. “I think a part of you knew exactly what you were doing to him.”

“I could send him a card to apologize,” I said finally, in a stupid, silly voice.

It was such a bad joke she didn’t even bother to react. She just looked at me, driving that pin straight through my heart again, so I fluttered and squirmed and finally grew still.

I was only joking about the card. After I came home from the hospital, I never tried to see or contact Patrick again. I stopped going to Jack’s games. I wasn’t even tempted. Not really. It was like a particular food I’d once loved had made me violently ill. So although I could remember how good it tasted, whenever I thought of it or automatically reached for it, I remembered how sick it made me, so the desire was outweighed by the revulsion.

We talked a lot about grief: for the loss of my mother and Patrick and Jack and the children I wouldn’t ever have. We talked about how I’d taken my grief and used it like a weapon against Patrick, how I’d turned the pain and the rage outward, away from me, as if I’d been handed a flaming sword and I’d turned it on Patrick in a desperate, frenzied and ultimately useless attempt to avoid being burned myself.

I used up a lot of her tissues.

We talked about how Patrick’s decision to break up really wasn’t anything to do with me at all; it was about him and his own grief for Colleen. “If Ellen had met him at that conference he probably would have broken up with her in exactly the same way,” said my psychiatrist.

“No, they’re soul mates,” I said. “It was true love for them.”

“It was timing,” she said.

We talked about friendship and how I’d let myself slip out of a social network. We talked about hobbies, other than stalking your ex-boyfriend. We talked about ways to deal with future relationships and future rejections.

I stopped using quite so many tissues.

Then one day I turned up and we chatted about a movie I’d seen on the weekend, and a new fish recipe I’d tried, and how we both wanted to eat more fish, and at the end of the session my psychiatrist said that she thought I probably didn’t need to make an appointment for the following week, and so I didn’t. I had a pedicure instead.

Ellen told me that I should leave Sydney, but I haven’t.

I’d miss my friends too much.

Tammy is living in the townhouse with me now, and we see a lot of our neighbors, Janet and Pete. Their kids are in and out of our place all the time. Tammy and I looked after them last weekend so Janet and Pete could go away for a weekend.

I did end up going out with Janet’s brother for a few months. The boogie-boarding guy. Toby. He was fun and it was a good distraction for a while, but he’d just come out of a relationship and in a strange way I had too, so we were both weird and fragile, and the relationship amiably petered out.

We’re still good friends, which is an odd experience for me. I’ve never been friends with an ex-boyfriend before. I don’t really understand how it works, or what the rules are, but so far it’s been fine, sometimes a bit awkward. We chat but avoid eye contact.