I totally took it at face value and thought because she was finally able to be honest with others and herself, she was able to start healing and taking care of herself. I assumed that Mittens would come back anyway in the end so that didn’t surprise me. But I saw someone say that they thought the ending could be an illusion, and it made me sad. With that in mind, I can see it both ways.
The ending sequence takes place after Rosemary asks Gilda whether she has ever considered that maybe people want to see her to be happy the same way Gilda tries to make others happy. So in the illusion ending, this is Rosemary giving the readers a happy ending even if it isn’t true, like what Gilda did for Rosemary after Grace died.
Whereas taken literally, this is Rosemary telling Gilda that she deserves happiness, and Gilda then is able to take steps toward healing. She details how she takes care of herself now, how she lets herself appreciate things in her life and still has the same overwhelming thoughts but is able to see them as beautiful or interesting instead of just scary.
I think the “real” ending makes more sense for the book, because it isn’t a mean spirited story, and I don’t think the author would intend for it to end with Gilda actually not being okay after everything she went through. And the descriptions leading up to the ending felt like closure to me. Her thinking back on how much she loved Flop, and apologizing to everyone she lied to. Coming clean to Rosemary. It’s all the stuff that I feel like we wanted her to do the whole novel, so it makes sense to me that after doing those things, she is allowed to move on.
by fixationed