Page 95 of Call You Mine
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.
When I get to seventeen, it’s like my lungs can finally expand again. I’m not rushing to get the breaths out just so I can count them and get to my number faster.
I hate this.
I hate feeling so controlled by my own brain, convincingme that something will happen if I don’t count, if I don’t check and recheck, if I don’t have everything “just right”.
I’m not that meek, scared version of myself anymore, the one that Jett wanted me to be. The person he perfectly molded me into—an extension of him.
He used to control me.
Now, I’m being controlled by these compulsions.
“Ava?” Anderson whispers against my bare shoulder. I feel his heartbeat against my back, and I count the beats until they begin to slow.
That’s when I finally answer, “I have OCD.”
He doesn’t say anything, just holds me closer. It grounds me in a way I haven’t felt in so long. Like there’s something holding me together—allowing me to rest and let myself fall apart.
“Thank you for telling me,” Anderson whispers, but he doesn’t ask me to say more or need me to explain.
And I think that’s what has me opening up.
“I was in an emotionally abusive relationship a couple of years ago,” I say softly. The room is quiet, aside from the soft humming of the air conditioning. I don’t even know what time it is, but the darkness feels like some sort of shield, urging me to go on. “I left him, but it’s like my brain didn’t get the message that I was safe.”
When I left Jett, I thought it would make it all better—that I would feel like myself again.
Once I was out, I’d be able to breathe again.
But it didn’t work out that way.
Once I left him, it was like my mind still thought there was danger to prepare for—it didn’t know I was safe.
I sigh, voicing thoughts I’ve never said to anyone other than my therapist. “That’s when the compulsions got really bad.”
Before, the little habits I had were quirks that I didn’t think much about. I had never been so obsessive before.Checking locks. Counting. Rearranging things until they felt ‘right.’ Like if I could control every tiny detail, nothing could ever trap me or hurt me like that again. Like control could save me.
I think when you live in chaos long enough, your brain starts confusing familiarity with safety.
Those months when I started managing Hey Honey’s, helping Rumi with Evee, trying to hold it all together—I was suffering in silence to the point that any moment I wasn’t concerning myself with someone else, I was drowning in my compulsions.
“I’ve noticed you count,” he says. “Is that part of the OCD?”
I nod my head, even though he can’t see me. I fight past the shame and embarrassment deep in my bones that always comes with talking about my counting and the number seventeen and how everything always needs to be “just right”—whatever the fuck that actually means to someone other than me.
“When I was six, I found my mom unconscious,” I begin, telling Anderson a story I haven’t even told my therapist. “Just like Georgie did.” My voice cracks, but I keep going. “But I didn’t have an older sister to call. At the time, it was just me and my mom, and I remember learning in Kindergarten that when there was an emergency, you called 911.”
The memories come flooding back, the ones I’ve tried so hard to forget.
The fear, the anger, the intense, overwhelming sadness that I didn’t realize a six-year-old was capable of feeling.
I know why I count to seventeen. I’ve always known.
But when I was a kid, it was a pattern I liked to follow. When I was a teenager, I just thought it was because it was my favorite. As an adult, after Jett and the fire, it became my lifeline.
“Once I told her that my mom wasn’t waking up, and Igave her my name and address, she told me she was sending people who would help to our house.” I feel my eyes prickle, but I don’t blink them away. Maybe because I feel safe in the darkness, or maybe because I just want to feel the relief of letting them fall. “She told me to focus on my breathing, so I did. Every time I inhaled and exhaled, she counted. It took seventeen breaths before I heard the police sirens and the ambulance.”
Anderson is quiet for a moment, but his hold on me never loosens. “I’m so sorry, love. I wish—” he stops, his forehead coming to my shoulder. “I wish I knew what to say.” His voice cracks.
