Page 102 of Misery

Jealousy maybe. Or nausea.

The color of the thing growing between Oskar and me that might be love or might be lies.

I think about his hands on me. Inside me.

The way he made me feel safe when nothing else did.

But was any of it real?

How can I tell the difference when everything feels like deception?

The green spreads like infection across the canvas.

Purple follows—bruises, violence, the color of hands around a throat.

But also royalty, power.

The power Thiago thinks he has over me.

The power men take when they think they own you.

The power I'm trying to reclaim with every stroke.

My mother's scream echoes in my memory.

Not from today but from eight months ago when she came to the hospital.

When she saw me broken.

That sound lives in purple—the shocked grief of a parent seeing their child destroyed.

I'm crying now.

I didn't even realize it until a tear drops onto the painting, creating a small clear spot in the chaos.

I leave it.

Let it be part of the piece.

Salt and water and grief mixed with pigment and medium.

Blue enters last.

Sadness so deep it has its own gravity.

The color of Oskar's bike.

The color of the sky the day everything changed.

The color of my father's eyes when he's disappointed.

The blue spreads like water, like drowning, like being pulled under by weight you can't escape.

The painting is almost complete.

A mess of color and emotion that somehow perfectly captures this moment.

This feeling of being trapped between trauma and truth, between love and betrayal, between wanting to be saved and wanting to save myself.