The irony of fate

“Are you coming tonight?” He asked me, his lips lightly touching my ear, I stare at him, and I imagine what could happen if I did meet him tonight. I stare back to the wall and focus on nothing. My mind is empty. My hands start shaking and I know what is happening. I’m far too familiar with this sensation. The sensation of an addiction remembering you to give in. The burning sensation of needing something so badly that you can hardly breathe. I get up from that dirty mattress on the equally nasty floor and walk to the toilet avoiding the broken beer bottles and the cigarettes stubs that kept pilling every night. My legs threatened to give up on me for each step I took. I enter the dark toilet and poke a couple of times the old light bulb. The weak light flows through the bathroom showing a random guy, passed out with his head against the bathtub covered in his own vomit. Covered in his own blood, in used syringes and a vodka bottle. I cringe in disgust, but nothing could prepare me for the image I see when I stare in the mirror. The image of a stranger. Once someone I thought I knew. Once someone that had her life together. I was going to be someone. Where did it all go wrong? I look at the fainted blue eyes and at the dirty blond curls. I touch softly the bruised lips and the smeared makeup. The white dust still lingering beneath my nose. My fingertips shaking with the need… The need for relief.

My head bursting and my heartbeat as fast as the river flood on a mighty storm. I hold my heart and close my eyes, hoping that the pain will slow down, disappear. But it doesn’t. With defeat, I open my eyes and I breathe slowly, musty air filling my lungs. I return to the room, as fast as a hangover allows me and start pushing my wet dress from the night before down my spine. I shiver quietly at the cold material against my skin and stop myself from thinking about what made it this wet. I steal a couple of coins from the man that laid all night with me in bed and make use of the fact that he fell asleep once again to escape the mouldy apartment.

The sunrays outside feel like knives daggering my eyes and feels like everyone knows exactly what I am. The shame that I feel because of what I have become makes me want to go back inside. To the apartment where toxicity is never enough, and you are praised for all the wrong things. But I’m not. This time I’m not answering to what I want. I am not accepting a quick fix today. I am determined to change this life and get my old self back.

 I avoid all the disapproving glares and negativity of a perpetually perfect society that holds no accountability, trying to demean me to nothing for at least owning who I am and showing my real face.

I reach the closest phonebooth on the sketchy side of the town and insert some of the few coins I stole. I hear repeating beeps, but no one ever picks the phone on the other line. My vision gets blurred, tears on the edge of falling. I didn’t blame them. I didn’t like what I turned myself into either.

 I walk to the nearest fountain and submerge my head in the water. I ignore the confused stares I get and focus on cleaning all the dreadful traces of last night engraved on my face. They can’t see me like this after this much time, not that I would look clean anyways.

I take a long deep breath and decide to go through this. It stirred my stomach it was unpleasant, but I was way too comfortable with easy choices. I walk towards the house that once saw me grow up. Determined to make it count this time. Determined to never look back. Determined to be the smiley blonde I was once that would sing along in car rides and scream a little too loud when wishing someone a happy birthday. I wanted to see colours again. I wanted to feel the warmth, the vivacity. I wanted to see the sunshine and the rainbow showing up after all the rain and the greyscale my life was. I wanted to feel alive, to feel. To only depend on me and not on a line on the coffee table.

I start walking faster, afraid that if I take much longer the certainty I feel will be gone. My feet can’t seem to walk fast enough. My heart beat fast, but a good kind of fast. The type of heartbeat when someone yells surprise to you or when they tell you they have great news to share. The small town proves to be small when after just a few minutes after walking I could already smell the change. The air of a new life to come. The air of me asking for help. Of not giving up anymore.

But then there was nothing. Blackout. I heard the ambulance sounds. I heard panicked voices. I heard someone sobbing. I couldn’t feel a thing. Not the hangover, not the hope. It felt… Empty. Dark. Cold.

At the end of the day, my fate was settled. I chose to fight, but not soon enough. I chose to wake up, but this time my mind didn’t obey me. It didn’t matter that I wanted to change, not anymore. It all came down to the irony of destiny, saving me so many times from myself, only to kill me the very first time I don’t want to die anymore.

And in the very end, in the very few moments of conscience, all I heard again, was those four little words said to me earlier today, “Are you coming tonight?” I wasn’t. Not anymore. Never again.