Things I Pick Apart

"some people fall in love naturally.
i pick it apart until my hands are shaking."

Dakota Hights lives inside her own head more than she lives in the real world.

Every thought spirals into another. Every silence feels loaded. Every text left unanswered becomes proof that she's too much, too needy, too hard to love. She picks herself apart constantly - her body, her choices, the way she speaks, the way she lets people touch her even when she feels completely disconnected from herself.

To everyone else, Dakota is funny, reckless, dramatic. The girl who keeps going back to the same toxic guy even after he hurts her. The girl who laughs everything off and pretends she's fine.

But inside, Dakota is drowning.

She counts ceiling slats during sex to escape her own body. Tears apart the skin around her fingers until they bleed. Replays conversations over and over until she can't tell what's real anymore. And no matter how badly Jake makes her feel, she keeps crawling back to him because for a few fleeting moments, being wanted feels dangerously close to being loved.

Then Rory enters her life like warmth Dakota doesn't know how to hold onto.

Patient, grounding, and impossibly gentle, Rory begins unraveling the beliefs Dakota has spent years building around herself - that love must be earned through pain, that her body exists for other people, that she has to shrink herself to deserve affection.

But healing is messy when your own mind feels like the enemy.

As Dakota navigates toxic attachment, OCD spirals, intimacy, sexuality, and the terrifying vulnerability of being truly seen, she's forced to confront the biggest question of all:

Who is she when she stops living for everyone else's validation?

Things I Pick Apart is an emotionally raw coming-of-age story about obsession, compulsions, queer awakening, self-worth, and learning that love was never supposed to hurt this much.