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Soon, I’m just worrying about how much I’m worrying. Then I start worrying about the fact that I’m worrying about worrying.
“Who did this to you?”
You might live every moment, but they don’t stay. Not all of them. Most disappear, sucked into that yawning abyss of memory. And those that do remain will be nothing but snippets.
Memory of pain is often worse than the pain itself. It drives us. What we do or don’t do, embrace or fear, repeat or avoid at all costs—all of that is dictated by our memory of pain.
“Your darkness is my favorite part of you.”
You, Manuel, are my Person. For better or for worse. If I need advice, I go to you. If I’m sad, I call you and cry like a little baby. I tell you everything. You know all my secrets.”
“To win back the love of my life.”
OCD isn’t about washing your hands. It’s about living in constant fear of the outside world or, in many cases, of yourself. It’s a mind that attaches itself to whatever obsession it can find. One stuck in permanent fight-or-flight. One that can’t stop looking for tigers, even though it left the jungle millennia ago.
Where logic talks, OCD screams. And by then, you’ve bought so fully into its hollering that you can’t tell which one was the truth and which one was the worry. And you think in circles, and the circles are endless, and they consume you, and you forget that you used to have a personality outside those circles.
“I wish you could see yourself the way that I do. The way that…that everyone does.”
“Those thoughts—the ones that scare you so much? They don’t scare me, Eliot. They don’t scare me one bit. And you don’t…you don’t have to hold them all by yourself.” His hands gripped my cheeks tighter. “You never have. I’m here. I’m here, Eliot. Let me carry them with you.”
“I’ve loved you since that first moment on the playground, when you threw wood chips in those bullies’ faces.” His eyes shimmered. “I love you when you’re angry, I love you when you’re sad, and I love you when your head is filled with thoughts so terrifying you don’t think you can share them with me. In fact”—he squeezed my hand—“that’s when I love you most.”
“Your brain is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Don’t apologize, Eliot Beck. Don’t you ever apologize for being who you are.”
