read: 06/07/23 - 12/07/23 | spoilers!
I think, when it comes to media, there are two categories: media for the affected and media for the unaffected. When you create something for the affected, you create something too exact and personal for the unaffected to understand. When you create something for the unaffected, you create something too vague and 'educational' for the affected to relate to. This book is so unapologetically the former, and I adored it.

By the time we reach the end of this book, we realise that the main character is, in fact, the janitor who has created an alternate reality to live and cope in, and that this is the reality we, as the reader, follow. It is an ingenious simulation of heavy maladaptive daydreaming and the way trauma manifests in the brain.
It was incredible to see how effortlessly symptoms and flaws of these coping mechanisms were weaved in to the story. How the janitor restarts his music after being interrupted so he can reset his alternate reality. How Jake's parents get older throughout the evening, because the janitor's parents are now dead, and it's hard to recall them as just one age. How our main character cannot decipher whether the childhood photos are of her or of Jake, because, as we learn, they are the same person. These little moments are added in the movie adaptation, too: Lucy's jumper constantly changing colours, the song the janitor is listening to suddenly playing through the car radio, the dog shaking for far too long because it's not doing so naturally.
It isn't a leap to realise that, though never explicitly said, the janitor has repressed something to the literal basement of his mind and this reality is a distraction from it, yet it's no longer working, and that's where our book begins.
"I'm thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It dominates."
Of course, our main character is talking about breaking up with Jake, but when we realise they are the same mind, the narrative becomes a very accurate depiction of dealing with suicidal thoughts, and how these thoughts have permeated our janitor's coping mechanism. Slowly, horrifically, bit by bit, these thoughts take over the narrative until they blend into one and the book ends with suicide. The title is just one of many things that is layered in this book, and it is so gripping to watch everything you read unravel to mean something else.

This book perfectly blends horror and pain, and was an amazing representation of what it feels like to lose yourself in a coping mechanism.