cleaning high as a rehearsal for surviving alone
the getting high and cleaning became an important exercise, like creative visualization, a preview of the discipline and order with which she could survive alone if it came to that.
Context
The compulsion's origin, and the anxiety it was medicating: cleaning high was a rehearsal of the solitude she was already bracing for, a visualization of the immaculate space she could keep if the relationship collapsed. The steely-independence fantasy is undercut in the same breath by the whimpers and moans leaking out of her as she scrubbed — the dread the ritual was built to manage audible right through the ritual.