You’re lying awake still, eyes open, running the conversation from dinner for the ninth time. Not the words, which you’ve memorized, but the look that came after them. Was it contempt? Did you misread it? Did you say something that caused it? Were you actually cruel, and are you only calling it an overreaction because you’re defensive?
From the outside, you look like someone trying to sleep. Inside, you’re conducting a trial and it isn’t the first time. There was someone before this, and someone before that. Each time, the clarity arrived only after it ended, as a slow, sick oh, it was this again.
Two weeks ago, a different person told you plainly that they liked you. Your mind had nothing to do with it. No ambiguity, no puzzle. You felt flat, then a little dread, and decided something must be wrong with you.
What if the person you can’t stop thinking about isn’t the one you’re most attracted to? What if they’re the one your mind can never finish with?
Compulsion No One Can See
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