hopeless {Xaa & Vallen}

The rooftop is a place that overlooks the capitol, gives me a sense of control over the whole situation I found myself in. It reminds me of the glass windowed VIP rooms of clubs like Kaleidoscope. Of the four or five clubs in my rotation, Kaleidoscope has always been my favorite specifically for the view it gave me over its layered floor plan. I had every inch of that place in my view, up here on the rooftop, I had every inch of the capitol in view.

Days here were spent analyzing my fellow tributes, eliminating them one by one in my head. Who would be easy to dispose of who would make for some quality entertainment and who would be the ones fighting by my side. Refuge on the roof, an opened bottle of bourbon and a nice smoke let was the closest I ever got to feeling like myself. The self I constructed with the help of the chemical compounds that created the cocaine, mdma and hallucinogens fueling my life.

As the days go and my body adjusts to the lifestyle forced upon me, I can hear my mothers voice blaming herself. We both knew that she gave up on me years ago. She needed to give up on finding me help because she knew she would lose me otherwise. There were the dark days where no one knew if I would come home, the nights where everyone held their breath as I popped one pill to many, shoved more snow up my noes than my body could handle. Would I wake up in the morning, or were my cousins carrying my corpse home? There was never enough to satisfy the need to live in forged reality where real life problems can’t catch you.

I swore in the justice building, I swore on the train, I swore to strangers around me that my family, my mother, were dead to me. Anger and betrayal mixed with withdrawal was almost as deadly as the cocktails I would self-medicate with. Behind my callous nature and calculating eyes, there would always be a little oasis in my heart where my family resides. How could there not? We were conditioned from a young age to believe that the family was all that matters.

The elevator doors to the rooftop open. The place where I found refuge to let myself grieve the family that left me to die, the family that had no faith I would come home alive. I grieved the loving daughter that would lie unconscious in her mother’s arms when all control was lost. I grieved alone because letting anyone see my grief would destroy everything else I worked for. The grief was only a ghost of the compassion I once held long before the drugs destroyed my humanity.

The ghost of remorseful past would have to come back to haunt another day. I had company.

"Fancy a drink? ”, I asked the boy standing in front of me. I held up the half empty bottle of bourbon "It will only cost you your woes, my dear ”.


                                              Table credits: Dars