stomach acids >> billie 92

billie baptiste.

What have I done?

Another terrible, impulsive hair cut done, another miserable year of my life down the drain.

I just feel like screaming some days at how fucked it's all gotten - I can barely keep it in when I come face to face with myself. I can't keep doing this; grow up, god. Aren't you too old to be crying over a bad hair cut? But it's not just the hair cut and I know that, I know, I know, I know. I've got to stop calling Duke drunk, and I've got to stop stealing from work, but what am I without my bad habits, right? Sometimes I feel most like myself when I'm too busy fucking everything up, I think that's who I am naturally. 

The person who laughs in the middle of the storm, I can run from it all but it always manages to catch up, so I stopped trying. I stopped running, and now I just collapse when I feel my feet ache. I pretend things have gotten worse since I left 9, because it makes me feel like I'm still out of control. I've had a hard life, poor pitiful me. The kids here are just like the ones I used to know, so desperate to fuck up their lives before their time's up, it scratches the itch I have to watch catastrophes. Ken tried telling me I'd hate healthcare, and I think she's right. 

But damn does it make the time go by. 

Now that I have my own place, I just feel... empty? Part of me thinks that's just what adulthood is, the peace that comes with monotony, the screaming in my head stops and all that's left is a woman I stopped recognizing. Short hair, red hair, up-do, fucked-up, I change my hair and my make up and my clothes and am surprised when I stop perceiving the girl I've been trying so hard to kill. 

Instead, it's just me.

Always has been. 

I don't look after Avriel and Duke anymore, and I never thought I'd be so bad at taking care of myself. My roommate killed herself at the start of the semester, jumped off the roof top of Blessing Fenwick's Hospital of Mercy and the irony isn't lost on me when I come home to an empty dorm room. They offer me free therapy and I still turn it down, the thought of someone seeing me so clearly is terrifying. I don't even care to look at myself straight, always catching myself in the corners. 

Why would anyone else? That's one thing I've grown to love about District 6: how uncaring it all is. In 9, us street rats would get our tails entangled and we'd rip and tear ourselves free and ignore the blood that came, but here, it's all just drunk and stoned medstudents cramming another semester worth of anatomy and physiology and ignoring how on fire everything is. Until you can't, and then you're being scrapped off the side of the pavement to make way for another gurney coming through.

The cycle never stops, not even when I hit the bathroom floor. The room's spinning and I regret picking up the needle, again and again I keep lying to myself, but I love swimming too much. 

It's what it feels like to me, not even thirty seconds after injecting morphling I always feel so gone to the world. I enter something else entirely, and I feel a sense of glee every time I feel myself slipping into it, a haze gate that I reach for on my side. I curl up into a ball in one dimension, but I'm running for it in my next, the cool title floor feels like a gust of wind, I close my eyes and I'm free falling. It's coming! From beneath me, I feel the floor breathing and I hold my ear to it, careful to listen to every secret I can. 

I feel my face almost too vividly, pressing my cheek further and further into the floor, desperate to get closer to the earth. Everything but my hands feel lost in the fog, static consuming all but the way I extend my fingers across the floor, stretching skin hot-white. It feels as if I'm just a spine when I try to gather myself, slinking around on my joints like my elbows are my knees and my feet are melted to the floor. There's a clone of me in the walls, and I hold her gaze so she doesn't kill me. 

She's coming, and I know it, and I don't fucking care! Ha! 

Bitch!

I shout laughs at her, the room blackening until that's left are her eyes in mine, the intent to kill a twinkle behind it all. She's an entity altogether foreign to myself, and she distances herself ever so slowly as I approach, as if I'm what she needs to be afraid of. Everything seems more and more faint except for her, almost as if my mirror self is becoming more real than I am, and I don't fear it. 

Take my place, shadow lady, and show me peace. I almost forget where I am when I place my hand on the scissors, the cool metal a shock to both me and my reflection both. When I look up, it's just me, and I take myself to bed before I can do much else, thanking myself for the mind games. 

When I wake up, I forget it all and call home. The dial rings, and rings, and I plan my voice mail until the tone cracks, and I wait for Duke's voice. 

And I wait. 

And it doesn't come. 

I hang up without a word.