This is How Obsession Feels

It is a lonely place

There is a part of me that is locked inside four padded white walls inside my head. I suppose that is the part of myself that I would call Misty. The only person who has ever been able to reach her there is Snake — in his absence, Misty is completely alone.

The part of me that socializes, that gets along with other people, that does the menial tasks of cleaning, and doesn’t mind the constant bickering of the children — the part that my ex-husband, Atlas, loved — that person is hard for me to keep up. There are times when Misty’s energy is all I can access.

But nobody seems to like Misty, nobody in my small world, at least. Who but Snake would take it as a legitimate conversation starter when I say that serial killers are psychologically more interesting than mass shooters, instead of as a sign that I might need medication? Who but Snake would think that my mild intrigue with David Koresh is anything but perfectly natural? Who but Snake would be completely comfortable with the idea that, at the end of my life, I want to drink a strong herbal poison, curl up in bed, and never wake up again? (When I’m old, that is, when my children’s children are grown and Snake is long gone.)

I don’t say these things out loud. I’ve seen the look, gotten it for much lesser things that I’ve said — that mixture of wariness and shadowed fear, like I just might crack at any moment and start ripping the house to pieces. Like I just might be dangerous. I’m not — the most harm I’ve ever caused anyone is the normal psychological damage that we all inflict on our children from time to time without even realizing it — but only Snake doesn’t seem to feel in some way threatened by Misty.

Instead, I just agree once again as I am told how shitty the president is.

Snake is not afraid. He is not afraid of himself, he is not afraid to be himself. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t have a room in his head where that shit has to reside. He is just himself, and fuck anybody who doesn’t like it. That’s not to say that he isn’t afraid of anything, because everybody is afraid of something, but he is not afraid of death, and he is not afraid of who he is. There are so few people like that in the world.

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