1. Round and Round
"Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest over the fatal truth. The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life." Lord Byron
When the heavy rain fell, I used to spend hours and hours observing each and every drop of water that fell off the sky through the only and enormous window of my living room. Even if I didn't send a specific command to my brain, it worked at full speed to count them, exactly as if I was reading my usual twenty thousand words per minute.
My biggest wish was to discover how many drops fell precisely. Not one more nor one less. And when I had the feeling I was achieving the real number, something unexpected always distracted me.
Don't ask me how I knew I was getting to the right number; I just felt I was. And that wasn't enough for me. I needed to have certainty.
I've grown up with this constant need to search for certainty everywhere it went and anywhere it could take me, making each day of my life a bigger challenge than the last as I used my full capacity to help my team solve the BAU cases.
But there was a moment between what happened with Tobias and when I took the Dilaudid vials from his pocket right after killing him in which this path branched. And the almost empty goblet of wine I was holding insisted on telling me I had chosen uncertainty this time. The counting of water droplets was not worth anything else, much less the life I was living in.
I let my eyes wander over my bookshelves full of books from every kind, trying to imagine in which of them I should look for a cure to that anguish feeling pounding inside of my chest and that could take away those horrible memories that tormented me for months. Something that could stop my brain from working at thousand miles per hour all the time and that could shut me out from everything.
But my gaze was deceitful. It took me exactly where I didn't wanna go. Cold sweat formed in my hands, my breathing accelerated and my heart wanted to leave my body through my mouth when I began to imagine what was kept in the top drawer in my bathroom.
I looked to both sides, as if I had a bit of hope that someone would stop me and would tell me it would all be okay. But no, I never had that someone.
An icy breeze floating through my curtains brought me more despair. I rubbed my shaking hands over my arms, trying to keep me warm and keeping them busy for a while, even though I knew it was in vain. I closed my eyes in a sigh and ran to the bathroom without thinking a minute more about what was wrong and what was right. The only sensation I wanted was the absence of them all. And I knew that the liquid that cold vial held was my way out, my uncertainty.
I tried not to look into the mirror. I didn't wanna face the monster that could be wishing and twisting for something that wasn't even real. I just rushed my way to that drawer to pick up the tourniquet, the syringe and the vial, the only items stored there, before running to my dark bedroom. I placed the stuff in my bed as I sat in there and my eager was only increasing until I felt my mouth watering.
Raised my shirt sleeve quickly and set the tourniquet in my arm with no difficulty. After all, I had done this a few times before. And each one of them I felt as guilty as I never felt before.
I opened the new sterilized syringe package and fit it in the vial, pulling 2 ccs with trembling hands. My heart even skipped a beat when I knew it was time for my elation.
All set! I just needed to get my best vein and push the plunger. It only took a little contact from the needle on my skin to my whole body ignite. My senses turned heightened even allowing me to hear steps on the street, a few meters and doors away.
The magic liquid penetrated with such ease and when I untied the tourniquet, the ecstasy was almost unbearable. Each muscle of my body contracted in pleasure and everything went in slow motion around me. My head shut off gradually as I felt my eyes roll over my head, in a big wave of pleasure which seemed infinite at every second that passed by. I still had a little bit of conscious to throw the syringe to the floor and, at long last, everything was gone.
My body floated in nothingness, in the absence of soul that gnawed me night and day. All my memories from that day and the days that went on intolerable were dissipating from every neuron that still wanted to make synapses. Until there was nothing more to feel, nothing.
And there wasn't…