Installed in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, forbidden from seeing my friends, from leaving the house without permission and without Carol as an escort, I was as good as dead. Shuffling from the bed to the shower, watching the same news on TV, listening to the same music piping from the radio. This was what being cured was like: like being in a fishbowl, circling always inside the same glass. I did what I was told, helped my parents with the chores, reapplied to college, since my admission had been rescinded once the facts of my time in Boston became public. I wrote letters of apology: to countless committees, to public officials, to my neighbors, to faceless bureaucrats with long, meaningless titles. Slowly I earned back certain freedoms. I could go to the store by myself. I could go to the beach, too. I was able to see old friends, although most of them were forbidden from seeing me. And all that time, my heart was like a dull hammer in my chest. It was a full six months before the Portland Evaluation Committee, as it was called then, decided I was ready to be paired.
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