THE HORROR OF HUMANITY: ALL MY LITTLE OBSESSIONS BY HENRY CORRIGAN

22/6/2022

But the bit which frightens me and still keeps me up at night, is the realization that what really helped wasn’t love or perseverance or even understanding. What really helped me was luck, pure and simple.

For as long as I can remember, I have tried to control the world around me.
Not in a Lex Luthor, conquer the world sort of way, but in a way where maybe things wouldn’t hurt so much and that the world would start making sense.

I have tried pacing and I have tried humming.

I have scraped my heels against the ground.

Cracked my knuckles.

Clicked my teeth.

Blinked.

Overeaten.

Knocked wood.

And chirped.

Always in even numbers, never odd.

None of it helped, unfortunately, try as I might. It didn’t stop me from getting bullied as a child or as a teenager, or even as an adult at work. In fact, it only made things worse.

My rituals, all of my little obsessions, have never prevented me from sinking into depression, quelled my nightmares or stopped me from breaking down crying at my desk. And to me, this is where all of horror truly begins. With the mundane little unpleasantries we’ve all been trained to regard as normal.

I think all of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves trapped in a ‘team meeting’ with people we don’t trust, and been forced to listen to coworkers argue because one can never let anything go and the other can never be wrong.

During one such meeting, my supervisor, in an attempt to stave off an argument that could have gone on forever, turned to me and asked what I thought would solve the problem. Now, I cannot for the life of me remember what they’d been arguing about. but I do remember the effort it took to not only speak, but to keep from saying what I was really thinking. Which was that anything, even killing myself, would have been preferable to their company.

In the years since that meeting, which was not all that long ago, I have learned a lot. I’ve learned to talk about my deep, black thoughts and to write everything down no matter how ugly it got. I have learned to manage and to not push myself when I can feel those black thoughts starting to return.

But the bit which frightens me and still keeps me up at night, is the realization that what really helped wasn’t love or perseverance or even understanding. What really helped me was luck, pure and simple.

Being lucky enough to find a therapist who took my insurance. Having the sort of good fortune where medication actually did something, the way it doesn’t for some. Possessing family and friends who were willing to support me and give me the space I needed to crawl out of the black.

Now, I don’t want to say that I am better now, because better implies that I’m cured and there is no cure for who I am. I am still obsessive and depressed. I still check my locks ten times and blow the exact same number of kisses to my daughter while she sleeps, and while objectively I know that none of this really helps, a part of me has grown to find comfort in a world that makes little sense.

I might not see any concrete results from my efforts, but that has never stopped me breathing a little easier, all the same. My rituals are a part of me and though my depression is prone to strike at a moment’s notice, I am at least better armed against it. I know what to do to keep myself going.

But the part of me that accepts this, is also the exact same part which never fails to remind me of how close I once came...and how close I could still come, if I’m not careful. For absolutely no reason at all.

A Man in Pieces: An American Nightmare
by Henry Corrigan

Driven by bad choices and worse options, a desperate father-to-be must battle his abusive boss for the last slot at a dead-end job, but the fight may lead one of them to murder.
Mike Harper would like nothing more than to burn his dead-end job to the ground. But with a wife on bed rest and a son on the way, discovering that the company is downsizing couldn’t come at a worse time. Now, struggling to stay afloat, Mike is forced to fight for the last remaining spot to secure his family’s future. It’s too bad that Tom, his obnoxious boss, is in the same boat.
Tom Downes is a man with few friends and even fewer prospects, but the aging veteran has never gone down without a fight. Now, with his health failing and his marriage falling apart, Tom is willing to do whatever it takes to keep his job.
With a blinding snowstorm closing in, these two desperate men will battle each other on a long and twisted road fraught with heartbreaking losses – and murder.
For when it comes to staying afloat, the American Dream can break anyone…

Henry Corrigan

Henry Corrigan is a bisexual, omnivore author, poet and playwright who writes every kind of story. Whether it’s horror or science fiction, erotica or poetry, high fantasy or children’s books, he writes it all because every story matters to him. They’re what keeps him going. Always an avid reader, Henry started writing poetry in middle school but it wasn’t until he started writing erotica in high school that he really learned the mechanics of writing. What started out as private stories and love letters, soon became publications in anthologies.

To date, his horror novel A Man in Pieces is due out from Darkstroke Books on 7/29/22. He has the rough drafts of two science fiction books, one horror novella, one play, four children’s books, numerous poems and several song lyrics waiting in the wings. Above all, he wants to be known for not staying where he’s been put. To always surprise people, especially himself. Because that’s what makes it fun. The feeling that even he doesn’t know what he’s going to do next.