The Good Lie

by A.R. Torre

Obsession, as I frequently told my clients, never affected outside situations. They only made your internal struggles—and resulting personal actions and decisions—worse.

The truth is, wanting to harm or kill someone is a common part of the human mental circus.

“Personality disorders

psychological trauma

Two sides didn’t mean he was manic.

Some can’t handle their violent impulses. Each interaction with a person is a risk, and they control themselves through those risks until they break.

After they break, they experience a reset of sorts and continue on.

Others are sociopaths who see other people as dispensable. Killing isn’t done for enjoyment but as a solution. If a person is in the way or causing an annoyance in their lives, they handle them the same way they’d handle a mosquito—kill it, flick it to the side, and move on.

Then you have the attention seekers. They enjoy the power rush that comes from killing and want the media splash, the tearful families, the fear. They embrace the notoriety, the cat-and-mouse game with the police, the belief that they are outsmarting everyone.

my fears were bred from paranoia and absolutely nothing else.

“Like Stockholm syndrome.” “Yes.” The syndrome wasn’t an official diagnosis but a mental coping strategy,

I may have only had my cat and a DVR playlist of romantic comedies, but my life was absent of grief, and that additional force took loneliness and drenched it in agony.

I considered the options. “Both.” Definitely both. The one thing I hadn’t needed was that reminder of what good sex and intimacy felt like.

He paused, and at least he was listening. Human nature would dictate that he wanted to believe me. I just had to give him the pieces to justify it in his mind. I tried not to look at the knife.