I want to scorch Nils's face with my cigarette. Right on his cheek, just below his mole. Is that horrible? Does the fact that I want bloodcurdling screams to replace his self-righteous mien make me a horrible person, or is that only reserved for when I go through with it?

We had a fight, and I enjoy watching the antagonistic glances he throws my way through the blinds. He found my cigarette packet this morning. I normally hide it behind the pots in the balcony, but I must have left it out last night. I woke up to a cold, empty apartment, and the packet lying on my vanity table pinned down with a passive aggressive sticky note that read, "Bravo."

He's had a pissy attitude ever since he got back from his jog. And I get it. He doesn't like me smoking, but he acts like I've handed him the biggest disappointment of the year. Like he's come home to find someone's taken a crap in his shoes. He acts like Mum whenever I breathe in her vicinity, and I don't like how that makes me feel—like an infant. Like I can't have something that's mine, that he doesn't like, without twisting it into a deal breaker.

I was a smoker when he met me. I stopped, just as I'm planning to stop in the future—but this isn't about that. This is about him wanting to control me. He's already turned our apartment into a shine of all things healthy. He picked out our living room carpet based on how suitable it was for his Saturday afternoon yoga. I let him do that. I let him mistake my misplaced love for passivity, and it made him all the more bolder to demand I compromise my integrity.

So I gave it to him this morning. We went at it. Both of us digging deep for those ugly sentiments that had been chipping away at us in private these past months. I wasn't mincing my words when I said, "Your body is not a temple. All that kale, and quinoa, and those fucking disgusting juices—you seem to have forgotten where they go, Nils. They go down that toilette. You shit. You shit, and when you die, you'll become a big pile of decomposed shit.

"And you're so afraid. Admit it! You're afraid of tracking in the tiniest speck of dirt on the mat, and crumbs on the table, and anything that pollutes your precious temple and reminds you, you're going to die. 

"You're going to die, face it. Don't run from it."

"I rather not die coughing up my fucking lungs. There's a difference," he yelled back. And it was from that point onwards our argument plummeted in maturity and became a competition of who could score the pettiest points. Feelings got hurt, and now we've resorted to occupying opposite ends of the apartment to lick our wounds in private.

But I'm over feeling hurt. I want to hurt back. I light a cigarette, making sure the balcony door stays wide open with my foot. I lean against the railing and make a show of exhaling into the apartment. I don't take my eyes off him in the window. He's in the kitchen, the furthest distance away when measuring straight across our 640 square feet apartment. He's bowed over his papers, his fingers fast at work on the keyboard, but I don't miss the way his typing tappers off as more smoke diffuses his way. When he glances up with a scowl on his face, it should feel like a triumph, but it tastes bitter. Resentment backwashes in my mouth and aggregates in the corners under my tongue. The longer I savour the cigarette, the more frustrated he gets. I'm not stupid. I hear the warning he hammers into the keyboard.

The outline of his tense shoulders is partly obscured by the slats in the window, but the frustration in nonetheless there. Will he get up? I want him to. I want him to come storming out, push me away from the door and slam it in my face. But I know he won't. His animosity won't extend farther than throwing angry looks my way. That's just Nils. He's a bedrock of unwavering patience in the turbulence that is my existence. It's when I've pushed and pushed, and Nils doesn't give in and retaliate that I know that I'm in the wrong. It doesn't make the bitter pill go down any easier, but it cools my head long enough for the realisation to sink in—I need to apologise.

I should stop being immature, I know that, but my mouth froths with disgust at the thought of letting him roll me over. Why should I let him? Because I'm unstable? Since when is it a crime to show my emotions. Am I to hide them? To plaster on a smile for him when I really want to scorch his face off. This is what he wants. In the end, this is exactly what he wants. It's part of his insidious scheme to keep me afraid, and small, and always doubting myself—always the first one to forgive. Hell, he might as well have copied it straight from my mother's playbook. They're different sides of the same coin—both so fucking self-righteous and smug.

I don't realise I'm digging into the door with my nails until a splinter pricks my fingertip, but even then it's too late. I feel the gust, feel the destructive force of my hand, and my last thought before the door slams shut is that he should be the one apologising.

I scream. Not from frustration or fear that I've given him ammunition to use against me—no, I scream because the door bounces back. It should have stayed shut, but it bounces back, and that fleeting second it creaks back open is enough to glimpse Nils's expression.

I push the door shut with both hands and feel its violent tremor pass through me. I'm in pain, so much pain, but I can't pinpoint a single place in my body that hurts more than any other. I sink to my knees with a wail. The adrenaline leaves my body. I'm a wounded animal at point-blank range, and Nils's footsteps are closing in, ensnaring me in my panic. It's like everything has already happened. Nils has pushed opened the door an infinite amount of times, found me on my knees in an infinite amount of combinations, his face has taken on an infinite amount of expressions, and I've lived through every single one. Reacted to every single one. I'm exhausted by the time he reaches the door.

I want to be right. For once, I would like to believe I'm not behaving erratically. That it's not all in my head. That this anger is justified. But I don't know. I can never know when they look at me like that.

"Are you gonna call her?" I ask him. He steps barefoot onto the balcony after an initial pushback to get his body through the door. I don't know what he sees on my face, but I watch it drain his patience.

He bends down, picks up the still flaming cigarette, and puts it out on the door frame. He chucks the butt with a flick of his fingers.

"What's this?" he asks.

"What are you doing? Why are you on the floor?"

"Please, don't." I've said this before. Please something. Please not this. Please. It's always me pleading. Always me asking for something he can grant.

He looks at me like I'm crazy. He said he would never do that. That he would never be like my mother.

Isn't this what I've always known? There's no such thing as unconditional love. There's no such thing as unwavering patience. Eventually, they all end up looking at you like you can't be trusted with your emotions. But goddamn it, I know what I'm feeling. I'm feeling hurt. I'm feeling hurt. I'm—

We're wrestling. I'm pushing. I'm pushing him, punching, screaming for him to get out of my face. He's pulling. He's pulling me up, pulling me closer, pulling me into his chest. I'm pressed into his shirt, my shouts muffled against his pecs. He holds me, his arms wrapped tight around my head. He smells like home. I'm inhaling him, gulping down the cedar and pine and sweat that clings to his body. His voice washes over me and ebbs. A ceaseless hushing.

He will call her. I see it so clearly in my mind. The two of them, co-conspirators over a shoddy telephone line—"how will we fix her this time?" he'll ask. Her muffled answer, "Upping the dosage of venlafaxine will get those pesky synapses, but this sets her back. It's a shame, DBT was going so well."

I writhe against his embrace, and when that doesn't give, I bite him—hard. His arms spring open. The first breath of liberation is as cold and isolating as his pain. His eyes are wide, startled, scared.

"Lisa," he pleads.

"Lisa."

He takes a step closer. He's scared. He's telling me to stop. But how, how do you stop a pressure cooker about to go off? I don't know which way I'll explode. I don't know if my fists will hit him, or if they'll hit the glass or the door frame. They're 20 tonnes of baggage weighing me down. I don't want to unfurl them. I don't want another look at years of unresolved mummy issues, and abandonment issues, and anger issues. I don't.

I run inside, vision blurry with unshed tears. I find my phone on the coffee table, and the keys on the wall, next to the shoe rack, and I'm out the door. Nils is calling me, but between my heels on the steps in the stairwell and my heartbeat, it's as futile as shouting over two marching bands playing out of sync.

I should feel better with lungfuls of October air, but I don't. I'm drowning in uncertainty and fear. The city is a blur. The streets an impressionistic painting of contained chaos. My phone is a brick in my hand until I realise it has a use.

My fingers claw at the screen to get it open. And then I'm dialling, listening to the drone of the signal going through.

"Hello."

I sigh a shaky breath and lean against the brick building. I close my eyes against the tears and breathe.

"Can you come and get me?"