All the Other Colors Drowned

Chapter 2 - Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.

My whole life, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I didn't make friends easily, and while every other kid at my school had a best friend, I had just me and my sketchbook, most of which were filled with doodles of Marceline from Adventure Time.

That's why when I started having social media at thirteen, which wouldn't be very advisable but I did anyway, I understood for the first time what it meant to participate in something. It started in Facebook groups, where everyone could post their art, and mine received five or ten comments. To this day I consider it a high number. Usually people just like it, but to care enough to comment... It made my days.

In one of these groups, I met Dalí. She liked the same cartoons as me, we had several things in common and, obviously, she also loved drawing. To be more exact, she liked to paint. Her name was Daniela Teixeira Souza, and instead of the classic "Dani" for a nickname, she liked Dalí, a direct homage to her favorite painter.

She introduced me to Tumblr, a more youthful site that proposed blogs instead of pages. I liked that, and I was fascinated. So many talented designers just a click away, exhibiting their beautiful portfolios... I knew I belonged there. And with all the fanart I made, I ended up gaining followers quickly. Not at stratospheric levels, but at fourteen I already had a thousand followers. That was the world to me.

And along with my taste for virtual communities, my friendship with Dalí grew. She in São Paulo and I in Minas Gerais, united by our love for art and our terrible sense of humor. She was my first best friend. I could tell her whatever I wanted.

Sure, it was dangerous for a child to make friends with strangers on the Internet, but the Internet was what connected us. Fortunately, I got lucky. Dalí, being only two years older than me, never failed to be the support I needed when I felt bad, and she had heard me vent so many times that I honestly didn't know how she could handle it.

I knew that if I needed to hide a body, Dalí would be the last to judge me.

And, as with every good thing in my life, OCD loved to destroy it.

I remembered very well a time when I started thinking "what if Dalí is a middle-aged guy trying to win me over?". The thought was horrifying. At that point, this strange man would already know what I liked, he would know my name, my age, where I studied... And he could come after me to carry out one of the countless terrible scenarios that awaited me.

Being a victim of human trafficking. Sex trafficking. Being captured and killed. Being made a slave until I died. My brain began to give me a list of detailed thoughts to torture me, and I was sure, from that moment on, that all of Dalí's texts had been calculated to deceive me. They were signs.

The signs. One of the main factors of magical thinking, which came with OCD. Magical thinking was nothing more than the idea that thoughts could transform reality, that if I just thought about something, that thing could happen. It also involved thinking that everything around you was a confirmation of your obsessive thoughts, that they were right.

I knew it didn't make sense for Dalí to be an evil man who wanted me harm. She had already sent me photos of her face, had also given me personal information and had never asked for it back. No messages like "send a photo of yourself", "can I come visit you sometime?". And I tried to convince myself of that. But the OCD was stronger. And I always had an answer for all my attempts to be rational.

No, it doesn't make sense, she has already sent me pictures of her, she gave me personal information.

They can be fake. They can be random pictures from the internet.

But I've searched, they are real pictures.

It could be his niece. Or his daughter. He's tricking you very well.