The Break-Up Retreat(11)
“Isobel,” she greets me, smiling. “Hi. I’m so glad you could join us.”
Funny phrasing, given that I was told it was mandatory.
Martina claps her hands, looking around the table, and her smile grows ever more luminous. Her hair is in a soft, loose braid, now, and she’s got a shawl over her white button-down.
It makes her look like an off-duty socialite, or maybe a tech CEO, someone who’s spent all day trying to figure out how to get away with firing workers in favor of AI and is planning on spending the weekend at a meditation retreat in the mountains.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a speech,” she says, and the woman next to me laughs, much louder than the joke deserved.
When I look at her through the corner of my eye, I see that she’s much younger than anyone I might have expected to see at Himlafall. She’s at most in her early twenties, sporting a golden tan and long, luscious peach-pink waves in a high ponytail. When she turns her head to Martina, I see that she’s got a tiny star tattooed behind one ear.
“The first night here is always hard,” Martina continues, sounding very much like she is, in fact, making a speech.
“You are all in a new place, surrounded by people you have never met before. You have left behind your homes, your jobs, your friends and families in order to come here.”
Her eyes seem to glisten with tears, for a second, but when she blinks, they are gone. A trick of the light.
“And I am so grateful,” she continues, “that you made that decision. Not just for the privilege of meeting all of you. Not just for the journey we are going to go on together. But for yourselves. For the fact that all of you decided to take care of yourselves. To love yourselves enough to do this.”
The woman next to me is nodding energetically, her pink ponytail bouncing. When I sneak a glance at the woman sitting opposite me, who appears to be closer to my age, with long, straight, black hair falling around her shoulders and a long, thin face, she appears to be listening intently, a small but deep wrinkle between her eyebrows.
“Tomorrow, we are going to start the work. And I am not going to lie to you. I am not going to tell you that this will be easy. Nor will it always be pleasant. Change is painful. Opening up is painful. At the end of this week, you will have discovered things about yourself you had buried deep down within. You will see yourself, and your history, and your context in a very different light than you do right now.”
Martina looks around the table once more. Am I imagining it, or does she linger, when she looks at me? Is there an intensity there, a sense of connection?
Or is that just her specific brand of charisma?
Maybe we all feel like she’s looking directly at us. Talking directly to us.
The skin on my arms prickling, I pull at my sweater.
“But it won’t all be painful,” Martina says, her voice softer, now. “It will be a time of discovery. Of recognition. Right now, you are all strangers to each other. But at the end of this week, these women will be your community. Your family. You might not believe me, right now, but I have seen it over and over again.
“There is a reason we focus on group therapy here at Himlafall. Because the issues which have brought you here, the issues which have kept you from finding real, lasting romantic connections, are not just individual. They are systemic. You will find your own experiences mirrored in the stories you hear. You will realize that you are not alone. You will see, together, that you are loveable. That you are deserving of so much more than what you have received up until now.
“And the first people who will show you what you are worth, and how it feels when you are loved, openly and truly, will be the women sitting next to you.”
Martina falls silent.
As I look up, I see the faces around me, mirroring the apprehension I’m feeling. Eyes, searching warily around the table; making contact, then looking away.
“But that is all ahead of us,” Martina announces. “Tonight, we will just have dinner together. We’ll get to know each other a little bit, we’ll have some good food, and then we will go to bed.”
She sits down.
The girl with the pink ponytail starts clapping, loudly, and after a few, confused seconds, the rest of us join in.
Martina laughs and shakes her head. But I swear that the high blush on her cheeks is one of satisfaction, not embarrassment.
“Well,” the girl with the pink ponytail says, her voice loud and clear. “Maybe we should start by introducing ourselves?”
She looks over at Martina immediately, for reassurance, and the doctor smiles.
“I’m Clara,” she says, leaning forward over the table. “I’m twenty-three. I’ve grown up a bit all over, but most recently I’ve spent the last year travelling around Southeast Asia. It was a really wonderful experience. I don’t want to sound like a typical white-girl cliché, but I really do feel like I began to find myself there.”
She laughs. There is not a trace of self-consciousness in it.
As I take a closer look at her, I notice the various diamond studs making her ears glitter as she turns her head.
Ah. Not a young, artistic type, as I’d first assumed, based on the pink hair. No, a would-be bohemian, funded by the bank of Mom and Dad.
Clara opens her mouth to say something else, but just then the door at the other end of the room opens, and our collective attention is drawn both by the sound and the smell.