Page 20 of My Sweetest Obsession
These devices wear down a person’s resolve. Their ability to handle the torment is stretched to the very limit until it snaps. But nothing could possibly compare to this.
The agony that wracks me now won’t let up. Not even for a second. Not even when I scream and beg. Not when I pray and make deals with a God I’m not sure I believe in.
It’s like death by a thousand cuts, only instead of dying and finding relief from the torment, I’m stuck suspended and at its mercy.
And those cuts just keep coming.
From a blade with sharp cheekbones, haunted blue eyes beneath thick, unruly dark hair, and a touch that once brought me back to life when I thought nothing and no one ever could.
It sinks into me.
Flays apart my skin.
Digs deep into my flesh.
Not a thousand times.
Not even a million.
Relentless slices and stabs straight to my chest…
Driving into my heart…
Gouging it and tearing it to shreds…
Until there’s nothing left there to beat.
Nothing to keep me going.
7
CAM
ONE WEEK LATER
No matter how many times I’ve seen this painting, the countless hours I’ve sat here, staring at it over the years—or looking at it online when I felt the urge to see the brutality and fall into self-reflection from somewhere else in the world—I always manage to find something new that I didn’t notice before.
Prometheus’s bicep tense and rippling with his pain…
The veins bulging in his forearm as he fights the torture…
How tightly his hand clenches in agony…
The eagle’s talon digging impossibly deep into his eye as it tears his liver from his abdomen…
All those little intricacies that make it so gruesome and so beautiful all leap out at me now, and I can’t tear my eyes away from it.
It doesn’t matter how often I’ve examined it; it still captivates me, still draws me in, still makes me question every decision I’ve ever made in my life.
Especially on a day like today.
When I have to take this step and face one of those unintended consequences I’ve been putting off for far too long.
At least my spiral last week proved a positive step in one regard; it’s forced me to do something I should have a long time ago—make amends.
I hurt so many people while I was caught in the throes of my addiction, and I spent so much time focused on getting clean and staying clean for one reason that I ignored all the other damage I caused along the way to others.
But not anymore.
