What if I activate it in my sleep. What if I shoot Dagon by accident. What if I'm holding him and my hand moves wrong and the arrow comes out and kills him for an eternity. What if I do it. What if I do it. What if the thing that's now part of me kills him. What if I'm the weapon now. What if my hand kills my mate.
I clamped my other hand over the tattoo like I could hide it from myself.
It didn't help.
I knew the shape of this thought. I knew it was a lie. I knew it was the OCD doing what the OCD always did – picking up the newest, sharpest thing in my arsenal and pointing it at the most loved thing in my world.
Knowing didn't stop it.
I bit down on my fist so I wouldn't scream.
My thoughts raced, worst-case scenarios playing out one after another. Every scenario twisted with blame and self-recrimination. What would I do in those situations? How would I react? But no matter how it played in my mind, it was neverenough. I didn't react fast enough. I didn't do the right thing. I let down the person I love the most. It was all my fault.
It's all my fault.
It's all my fault.
It's all my fault.
I rocked myself back and forth, as tears continued to fall.
I bit my fingers in hope that the physical pain would alleviate the mental pain. The thought of a blade flashed vividly. A sharp blade slicing through skin, blood spilling. The image was comforting. Horrifyingly comforting. I hated it. I hated myself and this relentless, vicious cycle.
I would give almost anything to know what it's like to live without OCD, without my loved ones dying in my mind every day. This was hell. The hell no one else could truly understand unless they lived it.
Maybe my love truly was cursed.
To be loved by me… I wondered if it was even worth it? My heart may overflow with genuine love, but my mind's love was like a black surge. It was toxic. It was rotten. It spread and destroyed.
Wrecking everything.
Killing mercilessly.
Again and again.
And in between the kills, a knife was twisting in my heart.
No matter how hard I tried. No matter what I did. It was always there to twist, to hurt, to make me bleed without anyone seeing, without anyone knowing. The silent torture in the harm wrapped around my love.
This was what my love looked like. Wrapped in agony, dripping with horrors.
The intrusive thoughts screamed louder. The pressure suffocating me. Anxiety pushed me toward compulsions,bringing momentary relief, up until the same circle started to repeat.
Tears fell, and I pressed my lips into a thin line so I could stop the whimpers threatening to spill. It hurt so much.
It hurt so fucking much.
From guilt, to pits of despair, to anger, and then something darker. My thoughts and emotions spiraled darker, twisting into dangerous obsessions.
The image of Dagon bleeding, screaming, choking… it tormented me relentlessly.No, stop it. I didn't cause this.But even as I said these words, I didn't believe them.
My thoughts spiraled dangerously into possessive, obsessive darkness. Watching Dagon almost die had ignited something fierce within me… a violent protectiveness I hadn't known before.
And underneath all of it, somewhere in the noise – through the scalpel thoughts and the arrow thoughts and the all my fault loop – another voice surfaced.
Never again.
It wasn't a resolution. It wasn't strength. It wasn't the moment I got my shit together. It was just another sentence in the chorus.
