“You, Bren, Andras, Wild, Luc, and me. Six. If I add King, it's seven. If I do the compulsion the right amount of times, then none of you will die or get hurt.”
His words gutted me. I didn't know how to respond at first. I knew the fear of losing people, but not like this. Not every day. I didn’t live with it constantly, every day, with intrusive thoughts attacking my mind. And not wrapped in invisible or visible compulsions to keep loved ones safe.
I couldn’t imagine what it was like.
“Then there are also therightthings." Di continued. "Like if I put my cup down, I have to position it right. It has to feelrightin my mind, or I can’t move on.”
After inhaling deeply, he said, “Most of it is in my head. Invisible. And all my life… I've felt like a monster because of these thoughts that I have.”
“You’re not a monster! Fuck, Diablos, you’re anything but.”
This belief he had isn't true. It's something he internalized because of the OCD and trauma, not because of who he is. But it doesn't change how real it feels for him. How he can't distinguish between who he is and the intrusive thoughts that make him feel like a monster.
He broke hearing my words.
The sobs hit hard and fast. I held him close as my own tears fell. Everything I said was true, and I would do everything in my power and beyond to prove it to him.
His demons may not have physical form, but I would stand by him every damn day as he faced them. If I could, I'd slay them all. But some battles have to be fought from within.
Still, that didn't mean he had to do it alone. It didn’t mean he had to fight them wrapped in darkness, feeling like a monster and unworthy of someone standing in the dark with him.
“I’ll always be here. Always,” I vowed in a whisper.
“Always,” he vowed after me, too.
We stayed wrapped in each other through the night. We spoke more after he calmed down and he shared more about his family.
He grew up in a house of chaos. He lived with his father and uncle, both of whom were alcoholics. His father raised his voice all the time and was like a ticking bomb, and his mother left when he was a baby. His father named him Diablos because he saw him as the demon he had never wanted.
My blood boiled hotter than the flames of Hell when I heard that. Now it made sense why he always preferred us to call him Di. But he assured me he started to love hearing his full name when it was me speaking it. Something about the way I said it.
An accident took the life of his father. His uncle couldn’t bother with Diablos and gave him up for adoption. I was grinding my teeth, barely holding the leash on my powers. I wanted to rage, to destroy those who hurt him as a child. I wanted to inflict greater pain than they’d ever known.
I made a silent vow to myself. No one would ever hurt him like that again. No one would raise their voice or make him feel cornered. I would rather die than allow him to feel even an ounce of the emotions he felt as a kid.
He told me more about his OCD and intrusive thoughts, too. He explained that almost everything was internal. Rarely could someone see the compulsions, like how many times he took a sip, for example. Or that earlier, when he was cutting the vegetables, he had had the intrusive thought of plunging the knife into my stomach.
He looked so ashamed when he said that. He pulled his hand from mine and wrapped his arms around himself, like he was bracing for me to recoil.
I didn't recoil.
I knew enough about OCD from Andras to understand: an intrusive thought is not a wish. It's a fear. The brain that loves the hardest is the brain that hands you the worst images and nightmares – here is the thing you could lose, here is how you would lose it, here is the thing you could do, what if, what if, what if – and the person living inside it has to swat the thought away a hundred times a day and still feel guilty for it landing in the first place.
He hadn't wanted to hurt me with the knife. The image had attacked him, and the attack was that his brain knew exactly what would devastate him most. That's how OCD chooses its weapons. It picks the people you love.
I gently took his face in my hands.
"Di. Listen to me carefully. The thought you had with the knife? That wasn't you wanting to hurt me. That was your brain showing you the worst thing it could think of, because I matter to you. If I didn't matter to you, your brain wouldn't have bothered. Do you understand?"
He swallowed hard. He didn't answer, but he didn't pull away either.
"You are not the thought. You are the person terrorized by the thought.There is a difference. And anyone who has told you otherwise, anyone who let you carry that shame, was wrong."
He started crying again. Quieter this time. Like something had cracked that needed to crack.
I held him through it. I would always hold him.
I shared with him a bit about my time when I came to the surface, too. I wandered the streets without direction and without desire to find one. I survived day by day and, like aghost, moved from place to place. I was lucky I was a demon because I could survive on less food than humans could.
