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    Obsession
    Obsession
    Obsession
    Ebook78 pages1 hour

    Obsession

    By Shelby Frost

    ()

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    About this ebook

    People think I have it all: I'm attractive, successful, have a great job, and can afford all the clothes, jewelry, and decorating for my townhome that my heart desires.

    But all of that is nothing.

    Because I'm the most insecure person I know. A 24-year-old virgin desperate to be loved, desperate to keep my secret:
    I hate my body. It's ugly. And I know any man who sees me naked will hate it too.

    EXCERPT:

    Heather
    Against all my better judgment, I heard myself blurt out, "I live right over there on the next block...." I could feel my cheeks flushing. He was good-looking. Taller than me, too. And he had a thin stream of blood running down his cheek, courtesy of my umbrella.
    His face screwed up into a thousand different expressions. I was afraid he'd settle on the thanks-but-no-thanks one and be gone from my life before I ever knew his name.

    Aaron
    She was gorgeous up close. Sprinkled with raindrops, frazzled, eyes alight, cheeks rosy as she profusely apologized. I was smitten. Dumbstruck, actually, that the woman with the legs that never ended happened to have a face that made you wince with its beauty.
    But, of course, a woman like her probably had a boyfriend. And I was just a man who got her groceries spilled on him.

    A novella, approx. 19K words

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShelby Frost
    Release dateFeb 26, 2015
    ISBN9781311737724
    Obsession
    Author

    Shelby Frost

    Shelby Frost is a pseudonym for an author with a background in publishing. When she's not writing, she's usually cooking, baking, baking more, or gardening. She lives with her husband and very old dog.

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      Book preview

      Obsession - Shelby Frost

      This book contains mature content, including graphic sex and language. Please do not continue reading if you are under the age of 18 or if this type of content is disturbing to you.

      Trigger Warning: This book contains discussion of body dysmorphia, and this subject matter may be triggering for readers sensitive to the topic.

      1

      Heather

      I hate grocery shopping. It depresses me. When I was young and I used to go to the store with my mother, it would only be moms and their small children pushing carts down the aisles. Now, it's couples—couples and their children all pushing individual carts (large carts, tiny carts, red car carts)—taking up entire aisles so I can't miss them and have to navigate around them. I'm not part of a couple, and I certainly don't have children. In fact, I've never had a real boyfriend in my 24 years of life. Some people think I'm a lesbian. Most people think I'm stuck up because they see a pretty face and expensive clothes and jewelry, and they assume that the reason I don't date is that I think I'm too good for everybody. It couldn't be farther from the truth. I'm not good for anybody. I'm the most insecure person I've ever known.

      As I struggle to wheel my rickety, squealing cart around the narrow aisles, dodging a family of five with five carts, too embarrassed to haul mine back to the front of the store and exchange it for a steerable one, I add a bag of apples, yogurt, ice cream, a French loaf, some candy—basically single-woman food—and I smile a wane, timid smile at a couple and their children, hoping they'll like me, hoping they'll think I'm friendly, that I don't look like the pathetic lone woman that I am. I see the men check me out and the women appraise me with fake, scornful smiles back to my insecure one. They seem quite secure in their inner loathing of me.

      It's crisp and cool outside. I'm burning up in here. My coat is too heavy and my nerves are overheating me. The front right wheel on my cart is stuck pointed left, so I have to lift the entire thing to get it to make a turn. I collide with a tiny toddler and her mini cart. She bursts into tears. I hold my tears back. Fall is here. It's going to be Thanksgiving soon, and I'm going to be all alone. It depresses me because then comes Christmas and New Year's, then Valentine's Day, and I'm sick of spending these holidays all by myself.

      There's absolutely nothing I can do about it. It's impossible to change. I've been to therapy. It hasn't helped. Maybe that's because I don't tell my therapist what my real problem is. I can't. It's far too embarrassing. In fact, I'd rather stay single for the rest of my life and die alone than tell my therapist what is really wrong with me. She couldn't help me anyway. So I basically recount my past to her over and over and blame my depression on bad genetics, my insecure upbringing, my parents' divorce, the fact I'm estranged from both my parents. These reasons I give her couldn't be farther from the truth. My genetics are fine—above average, even—except for two very important parts. And I've grown partial to being alone, away from my family and so-called friends. Because talking to anybody makes me feel more alone than I really am. I don't fit in, I don't belong, I never did, I never will.

      So people look at me and think I'm some stuck-up Barbie doll who has everything she could desire and can afford to be choosy. I have a good job in graphic design because I am a pretty face, and people like a pretty face. They like to hire a pretty face and talk to a pretty face and figure a pretty face knows how to make other faces pretty. And I do. Photoshop is my specialty. I can spot and erase every flaw. In a picture. Too bad that can't be done in real life.

      I have time to put into my work because I have no friends, family, or social life. So I make good money and can spend my money on clothes, jewelry, and decorating for my townhouse. That's all I'll ever have. Clothes, jewelry, and my townhome, my furniture, my decorations. Nothing to talk to, no one to hold, no one to be held by, nothing to make me feel better, nothing to get me outside of my own tiny world of insecurity. That’s the way it's always been for me. It's the way it probably always will be.

      I wheel my cart around trying not to look like the stuck-up person I know everybody thinks I am, because I'm not that person. I'm desperately lonely, and I just wish I had a friend to talk to.

      I have never liked my lips. Not the ones on my mouth and not the ones in my underpants. In high school, I used to breathe through my mouth when I slept and would often wake with my lips puffy and swollen. This was before Angelina Jolie's came into fashion and made mine look comparatively small. I used to panic on these mornings and hold a cold compress to them while I fumbled with my other hand to apply mascara and a stroke of eyeliner. They usually would stay swollen till around lunchtime, so I'd sit in class with my hand over my mouth

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