Can't Trust My Own Mind—Chapter Two
Warning: Depictions of intense intrusive thoughts, rumination, reassurance seeking, maladaptive behaviors, and other OCD related compulsions and behaviors. All thoughts are from the Author's own experience with intensive care mental health disorders. This is NOT glorifying anything, nor is it homophobic in nature. P-OCD and Sexual Orientation OCD are real conditions that cause legitimate distress in sufferers to the point where it ends in a severe drop in quality of life and/or suicide.
Luna woke up early in the morning. The sun had not yet risen but she found herself pulling on her skates and dashing out the door. If she could get down to the river, maybe she could forget the darkness of her mind, even for a minute. If she could get down to the river, she could escape from it all for a moment. She could just fly.
She didn’t remember her dream from the night before, but if she had to guess, she was glad she couldn’t remember. Luna pushed her legs harder and harder, desperate to avoid—
Luna shook her head. It’s not true.
Only someone evil thinks like that.
She pushed harder and went so fast that she tumbled into a wall. Luna fell back and her head banged against the ground. She had never been so grateful to have a helmet on.
“Are you okay?” Luna looked up to see a blonde woman leaning down with her hand extended. “Here, let me help you up.”
“Thank you.” Luna let the woman pull her up and gave her a smile of gratitude.
“Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah, just probably gonna have a tender head later, but that’s what the helmet’s for. I’m usually pretty good at this, but I was in my own head.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Luna nodded, smiling as the sun rose.
She has really pretty eyes.
Did she? Luna looked at the woman. Her brown eyes were pretty.
I just met her! Yeah she has pretty eyes, so?
I must like her though. This is further proof, isn’t it.
This doesn’t prove anything! Liking someone’s eyes doesn’t mean—
But you noticed. Why else would you notice?
“It was really nice to meet you. Thank you for saving me!”
The woman smiled and Luna skated off, desperate to make it to the river.
You weren’t supposed to swim in it, but that didn’t matter as Luna hurriedly took off her skates, helmet, and pads and dove in the water.
Statistically it’s unlikely but not impossible. There are many female—
No, no, not going there. Not real, not real, not real.
Luna’s head broke the water and she took in a deep breath before diving back in. She swam until she needed air, the soundlessness of being underwater favorable to the sounds of a slowly-waking city.
Luna didn’t know how long she stayed in the river, but she didn’t get out until clouds covered the sun and it began to storm.
Normally she’d stay in water in a storm anyways, loving the feel of the rain on her skin, but she wasn’t going to stay in a river in a storm.
Luna picked up her skates, helmet, and pads and began the walk back to her hotel, happy the river worked its magic. On the way she passed a mother walking her two young children.
No no no! Not true, not true at all. Never the case!
It has to be true. Why else would I think it?
No no no. Only horrible, evil people think it.
But not that way! I would never, I’m a coach!
Isn’t that how it always starts?
Luna looked around for a shop that might have a public restroom. Spying a coffee shop, she ran in and ran into the bathroom before throwing up in the closest stall she could find. It wasn’t true. It would never be true. She would rather die than it be true.
Luna was shaking by the time she left the restroom. Girls who looked to be about college age and that they had been up all night asked her if she was okay, if she’d taken something or something was wrong with her drink but Luna shook her head.
Her psychiatrist said it was a normal reaction to anxiety. The body thinks something is wrong and the fastest way to get something out of the body is to throw up. Shaking was a reaction to the adrenaline her body produced because her mind thought it was going to be attacked.
Could you be attacked by your own mind? Luna didn’t want to find out, honestly.
Pushing one foot in front of the other, Luna managed to walk herself back to the hotel she was in. Her flight to England left at nine o’clock that night which left her with plenty of time to fill. She should go check out the local branches of the Jam and Roller, check in on the teams and their competition routines, but Luna couldn’t make herself. It was a bad idea all around.
As she went through the sliding doors to her hotel, Luna nearly turned around and left again. Standing there, eyes like a hawk, was Matteo.
She hadn’t seen him in three months. Not since she had broken up with him in the gardens of her family mansion.
He looked...tense. Too tense to be the man he had grown up to be. He was an intense man, but he was not usually so tense. Had something happened?
“Luna.” His voice, oh his voice. Once they had barely gone a day without talking to each other, now she hadn’t heard it in months. It was like a balm to her soul.
“Matteo.” She didn’t come nearer, but that did not stop him from walking to her, stopping only where conventions dictated was polite. “What are you doing here?”
“And you found the hotel I am at without me even telling you I was here?”
“No, I did.” Luna turned to her right to see Ambar and Simon walking their way to where they stood. “Perhaps we should go to your room?”
“No, thank you, I am only here to put my skates away.”
“Your flight doesn’t leave for another nine hours, primita.”
“And how exactly do you know that?”
“I’m the CEO of one of the biggest companies in South America.”
Luna could only nod in acknowledgement. “Well it is good to see you all, but why are you here?”
“Let’s take a seat, shall we?” Simon urged them in the direction of one of the private conference rooms that Ambar must have rented for them in the little time between getting off the plane and Luna arriving back at the hotel.
“What’s going on? Did something happen with the company?” If that was the case, Matteo wouldn’t be here. He’d be writing another one of the heartbreaking love songs that he had been putting out the last few months. Each one broke her heart a different way.
“Nothing happened, everything is fine.” Ambar seemed to be in charge of this meeting, so Luna crossed her arms and directed her stare at her cousin instead.
“So why are we here then?”
The breath left Luna’s lungs and fear took over her whole body. They found out. They had to have. They knew.
Luna tried to force her breathing to remain calm, but she was so deep in her own head she didn’t know how to break out. Her palms began to sweat and she pressed them into her arms more to hide it. She was shaking. How could they know? How? She hadn’t told anyone! She hadn’t even written it down? Maybe she had done too much late night Google searching, but that was in incognito mode on data only.
She couldn’t hear Simon calling her name gently. She only knew her own mind. And her mind was spiralling.
That’s it. I’m evil. They finally know. They’re gonna turn me in. I’m going to go to jail. No, not jail, maybe I’ll just be executed. They execute people for that, don’t they?
They’ll tell everyone. Everyone will know. Everyone will look at me and know what I am. What an awful, awful person I am. They’ll know. They’ll all know. They’ll hate me.
They’re bringing me in quietly because I am Sol Benson and they don’t want to make a big scene yet. Maybe they won’t say anything. It’ll damage the company.
‘Luna?” Someone touched her arm and that jolted her back to reality.
“What about me?” She tried to remain calm, cool, and detached like she had been practicing for business meetings since she took over the company.
“Luna, you have basically cut all contact with everyone for the last three months and then yesterday, out of the blue, you call me and mention you might be demon possessed?”
“That was a joke, Ambar.”
“You don’t joke like that.”
Luna sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose before pushing back a stray hair that fell in her eyes. “I’m fine. Lonely, sure, because I was in a totally different country with no friends. But other than that, I am fine.”
“Luna, you haven’t talked to me in three months.” It was Simon who spoke this time.
“You haven’t called me either.”
“I have called. You never returned my calls.”
Luna frowned. She would have remembered that. “No, I never got any calls from you.”
“Because you blocked him like you did me? Or you never gave him your new number?” Matteo spoke for the first time and she turned to him.
I’m not even attracted to him. His arms, they always made me swoon but now, they do nothing.
His voice earlier made me feel something.
Maybe it was emotional rather than physical.
“Luna, talk to us. What’s wrong?” Ambar drew her attention back and Luna would have given her own life to have avoided it.
She’s so pretty. Her make up is perfection. Her lips, aren’t they pretty? Kissable—
No! What the hell? No! She’s my cousin! My best friend! No that’s so gross, we’re family! No, no, no!
Luna wanted to throw up right then and there. How could she even think that? For a second? No, no, no, she was straight to begin with, not to mention that is her cousin!
I can’t be straight, I don’t feel anything for men anymore.
But I have! I know I have!
Then why would I feel something for Ambar ?! She’s my cousin! Only someone twisted and wrong and evil feels something for their cousin!
It doesn’t matter what I feel anyway, she’s with Simon! Later, I’ll deal with this later. I have to get through this. I can freak out later. Breathe, breathe.
Luna forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply. “I’m fine, really.”
“Cut the bullshit, cousin.”
Now Luna glared at Ambar in full force, surprising everyone. “Just because I don’t constantly keep in contact does not mean anything is wrong. This conversation is over.”
Luna stood up to leave but Simon grabbed her shoulders from behind. “Luna, wait! Something is really wrong! You won’t talk to any of us, you broke up with Matteo, you look sad! What’s wrong!”
“Luna, please.” Matteo took one of her hands in his. “We just want to help.”
“Let go of me, both of you.” Luna forcefully pulled away from them. “I do not appreciate being ganged up on out of nowhere. I do not appreciate being handled like an addict who is hurting people. From now on, I want you to leave me alone.”
No, no, no, I need them, they make the thoughts go away.
“No, you don’t get to talk, Simon. I am fully within my rights to stop talking if I want to, for whatever reason. Should I have told you? Probably, but honestly I didn’t think about calling so I didn’t call. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Now I’m going to England and I expect to be left alone until I reach out again.”
With that, Luna marched out of the conference room to the elevator. Once she got back to her room, she closed the door, grabbed a bottle of pills, counted out four, and downed them. She threw herself onto her bed, pulling the covers over her and sobbing quietly.
