Daniel Torres

✣ name ✣

Daniel Torres

✣ age ✣

23

✣ pronouns ✣

he / him

they / them

✣ sexuality ✣

homosexual

✣ ethnicity ✣

hispanic

(Daniel was born in Mexico, but at the age of five, his parents had moved to New Jersey)

✣ hobbies ✣

Daniel  is very good at team-based shooters, like Overwatch and Valorant, and  has sunk more time and money into mobile gacha games than they'd ever  admit.

he used to run an anime and  gaming club in highschool, and buys complete box sets for manga he never  intends on reading, just because he could get it for a good deal.

✣ background ✣

(the following excerpt is lifted from Osmophobia, the song Daniel stars in).

(this is meant to be interpreted as a series of entries in their personal diary).

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× . trigger warnings for grief, loss of a loved one, car accidents, survivor’s guilt, delusions of persecution, and strong religious themes . ×

× . if you are sensitive to the above topics, feel free to skip the story below . ×

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{.⋅ ♡ ⋅.}


“God. It all happened so fast. So fucking fast.

I was just driving down the I-95, coming home from a road trip with my friend, and…I don’t even remember, I must’ve swerved, or there was a patch of ice, or something, because one second we were listening to music on the radio, and the next there was glass all over the floor and hot metal contorted around a speed limit sign.

I blinked, and it was all gone. And I’m supposed to be ok with that? I’m supposed to be ok with the fact that I survived a car wreck that I had caused and he didn’t?

I can't.

███

"I haven’t been able to sleep since I got discharged from the hospital. I feel like I just woke up from a coma, everything feels so bizarre, so unreal, if I’m not near-catatonic then I’m experiencing a pain greater than anything I had ever felt, and it keeps fucking going, like a cycle of total numbness followed by earth-shattering guilt and agony, over and over.

I can’t do this anymore. I …I’ve been starting to hallucinate, I think. I don’t know. Sometimes I just…there's this scent that follows me, it's really acrid and sweet, but in a gross way. Like rotting citrus. I don’t know where it's coming from. I think I need a lobotomy or something.”

███

“It’s been…a week? A month? I don’t know. I don’t really care. Nothing that happened before this event feels real, and nothing that happens afterwards feels like it matters.

My family’s been trying to comfort me, and…I appreciate the gesture? I guess? But I feel so empty. It feels like my brain’s been dug out with an ice pick or something. I don’t know. I know their support is supposed to help, but it doesn’t, and that scares me.

That scent, the smell of rotting lemons. It’s been following me around. A lot. I think I’m being watched, I don’t know by what or who, but I just feel it. I’ve blocked out my windows in my room and everything, but I still feel it.

I don't know what to do
I wish my best friend didn’t have to leave. I can’t stop thinking about a world where he didn’t have to leave.”

███

“I think there’s something following me.

I see it in the corner of my eye and behind my back, it’s some sort of demon, or creature, or something. It’s what smells like lemons. It talks to me in my sleep and right after I wake up. If I stare at the mirror long enough, I can see its eyes looking back at me. I wonder if that’s where it came from.

I think I’ve realized something. Something important.

That…that thing, the thing that’s following me, it’s my punisher. It’s here to torment me, for the life I’ve taken away from the world, for the hand I played in encroaching God’s domain and perverting the nature of life itself.

It’s my guilt and my abuse and everything I need to feel right now. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner, but I do, now, and I deserve every last bit of pain it awards me, it’s the price I have to pay for my sins.”

███

“My family won’t listen to me. I keep telling them about my angel, my tormenter, I tell them that I understand what I need to do now to bring balance back into the world, I told them that my pain is infinite and it’s the punishment I will dutifully receive from God.

It’s frustrating when they don’t listen to me, why can’t they understand what I see? They tell me I’m crazy but it’s not true, I’ve never felt more knowing and understanding of the nature of God and the world around me.

I guess this must all be part of my punishment, for my family to leave me behind as well. That’s ok, whatever God feels is just must be what is truth.

My family tells me they’re taking me to grief counseling. I don’t know what I need that for, I’ve already accepted all I need to accept. But I’ll play along, for their sake, because they don’t know all that I know.”

███

“It’s been…a couple months since I started grief counseling, and, wow, it’s…it’s been a lot.

I was told something really interesting by my therapist, she told me that I’m still at the bargaining stage of grief. It didn’t make sense at first, especially because I thought I'd already reached 'acceptance'...I didn’t believe her for weeks. It took a lot of patience, and a lot of time for me to even start considering it.
But she told me that bargaining is about trying to take back a sense of control after a great loss. It's not just about wanting what you've lost back as much as it is a manifestation of how we deal with guilt.

I told myself that I had some sort of responsibility, that I had deserved what happened, that it was all a part of some greater plan, because then I could rationalize all this pain I was feeling, because I wanted to feel as though I, as a single, powerless human, had some larger part to play in the flow of the world. Punishing myself made me feel like I was righting some sense of wrong, and believing that I deserved to feel the pain I did was the only way I knew how to get any sense of relief from that pain.

It…hm…

It's a lot to take in, but being able to rationalize the emotions I'm feeling doesn't make them feel as scary or abstract."

-ˏ✄• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •×ˊ-
FIVE YEARS LATER

“I think…something valuable I’ve had to learn was to stop looking for a solution to grief. In accepting that my friend was really gone, it’s granted me some sense of peace, which has allowed me to expand outwards from that grief…but, it’s still there. There exists a hole in my life where he once was…and that’s ok. A part of me, a big, fundamental part of me, died with him. And that’s ok.

There exists two sections of my life, it feels. A portion from before my best friend died, and everything to come afterwards. Maybe it’s reductive to think of it that way, but that’s just how my brain works. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in missing someone, I don’t think there’s anything wrong in upholding their memory, in taking solace in the fact that, even if they’re gone, the love you have for them is still there. Maybe that’s what grief is, it’s love in the absence of the loved.

It’s taken me a lot of time to come to terms with the fact that it’s ok to feel joy in the aftermath of grief. I tortured myself a lot over it. I was so determined to make myself as miserable as possible, to keep myself as miserable as possible, because it felt so wrong not to. It felt like doing anything other than being so totally consumed by the grief would’ve been doing his memory a disservice, and all this stress and pain pushed me towards a really bad psychotic episode. But, deep down, I think I knew that wasn’t what he would’ve wanted…and allowing myself to be happy was what my recovery was all about.

I don’t know, I think I’m rambling. I think about him every day, I miss him every second. The grief didn’t get any smaller, but everything else around it grew, so that it wasn’t so all-encompassing, and, I honestly think that’s enough for me to keep going.”

.

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✣ trivia ✣

on  top of loving anime and video games, Daniel listens to a lot of music,  and picked up the guitar at the age of 16. they still consider  themselves a novice.

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Daniel's  best friend was a boy he met in the 7th grade, the two were bonded at  the hip from a young age, and even attended the same college as each  other.

they liked to go on road trips all throughout the east coast, and swapped playlists the whole way down.

after  the car accident that took his friend's life, Daniel has adamantly  refused to ever get in a car ever again, and has resigned to taking  public transport everywhere he goes.

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Daniel  was raised Catholic, but has questioned his faith throughout most of  his adult life, and still feels as though he needs to do a little more  soul-searching before he can come to a conclusion.

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their favorite food is plain rice with salt.

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getting  on risperidone has really helped Daniel manage his emotions, and has  stopped him from relapsing into psychosis for the most part.

despite these improvements, Daniel has found it difficult to make friends again. they've been rather lonely as of late.