Text: In Let Me Count the Ways, Tomás Q. Morín details his journey with obsessive compulsive disorder and the various mechanisms he used to avoid the darkness that surrounded him. “I blinked the miles away one pole at a time Left Right Left… I would wake as [my father and I] burrowed deep into a neighborhood in search of heroin.”Text: When something is too overwhelming to think about, Morín counts instead. “If he was a bad person, would people think I was bad too when they found out I was his son?” “Left Right Left”Text: Learning how to navigate reality with his father becomes a central facet of Morín’s existence. “Like two human crutches [my mother and I] stepped into the cool night. Left Right Left”Text: To the point that, when his father leaves, he takes Morín’s sense of self along with him. “His leaving left me with questions I didn’t know how to answer. Should I still keep an eye out for the police? Was it safe to invite friends over now? Did people know he had gone back to his family? Was I still his son? Did he still love me? Love us?”Text: Provided with no resolution, Morín tears into himself. He sucks on his shirt collars, and when that causes his lips to dry, he rips off the curling bits of skin. “When one lip would become sore and needed time to heal from the damage, I would let it rest by peeling the skin from the other lip. Peel Bleed Twist Repeat”Text: From running to picking scabs, Morín does whatever he can to avoid feeling the pain of his father’s abandonment. “The formula [for runner’s high] sounds simple: run far enough and you’ll feel like you’ve just sunk deep into the arms of the love of your life. I pounded the road for a decade looking for that love and then for something else.”Text: Until we reach “Genesis.” In this final chapter, Morín tells the story of Coyote, a creature who is so afraid of losing his friends to the darkness, he builds a candle out of their tears.Text: Coyote builds the candle so large that his friend Crow eventually blows it out, afraid that it will set the whole world on fire.Text: “Coyote was so sad he became sick with a fever that lasted five days.”Text: But on the sixth, the night came. “Seeing the moon made Coyote feel better. Coyote and his friends never lost each other to the darkness again.” We cannot escape the darkness. But in Let Me Count the Ways, Tomás Q. Morín shows we can find the light that lies within it.
![Text: In Let Me Count the Ways, Tomás Q. Morín details his journey with obsessive compulsive disorder and the various mechanisms he used to avoid the darkness that surrounded him. "I blinked the miles away one pole at a time Left Right Left… I would wake as [my father and I] burrowed deep into a neighborhood in search of heroin."
image of electrical lines](https://i0.wp.com/sweetlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Artboard-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C731&ssl=1)
![Text: Learning how to navigate reality with his father becomes a central facet of Morín's existence. "Like two human crutches [my mother and I] stepped into the cool night. Left Right Left"
Image of crutches](https://i0.wp.com/sweetlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Artboard-3.png?resize=1024%2C731&ssl=1)
![Text: From running to picking scabs, Morín does whatever he can to avoid feeling the pain of his father's abandonment. "The formula [for runner's high] sounds simple: run far enough and you'll feel like you've just sunk deep into the arms of the love of your life. I pounded the road for a decade looking for that love and then for something else."
image of road winding away](https://i0.wp.com/sweetlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Artboard-6.png?resize=1024%2C731&ssl=1)
