LYSETTE GREY // D12, RESUB. FIN

It just takes a lot of work to be happy; if you know, you know.

I think I have an addiction at this point, not with smoking or anything. They're too expensive, and I live with a retired nurse, out of the question. Just in general, I feel like I'm addicted to- her? Maybe? To nostalgia? 

Maybe to fucking paint fumes at this point. 

Yesterday we slept on the floor, Olive and his friend (boyfriend? Are they official yet? It feels like it's been a decade at this point) helped us get about a tub worth of yellow and purples. And, "y'know, I really like the color purple. I used to be a yellow girl but I don't know!" This house is falling apart, and don't get me wrong, I'm struggling to all hell, but god if I don't feel like it's healthier than it has ever been with her. It's hard to be stupid and in love when both you and your girlfriend's family keeps dying around you. 

Maybe it's the rotting that I'm addicted to, really. The part before hand, like I can just smell out mold and mildew the day before it collapses in. My mother died, it's what I have tried and tried to come to terms to. My father was killed, my mother died. My house is held together by pink colored band-aids. What's new? 

It's hard to believe that some people are allowed to be happy for free. At this point, I don't think there's a single thing in my house that came free. Not Olive, not Avery, not my pants or shirt or the flowers drying on the wall or the mold in the closet or the air in my lungs or the bike with two wheels and one spoke built for two. We all pay, in one way or another, that's the thing I've learned through growing up. No matter how kind, how sweet, district twelve will kill it slowly. 

Or quickly, sometimes your mom gets speared by an elk and bleeds to death in the middle of her shift at the mines. And sometimes, your sisters are brutally killed on television and the only thing that returns is their shrunken heart in a box. Put a finger down, me and my girlfriend are both at nine. Let's see- never have I ever, gotten beat up by my boyfriend's ex-boyfriend and left bleeding on the streets only to be picked up by one of your creepy hospital siblings, who turns out to be killing people to harvest their organs? 

Oh, oops, put a finger down Olive. 

Olive, Avery, Lysette, it's hard. Still trying to be happy when everything in their- and mine too now, I guess- life is rotting to the core. Call it water damage, call it addiction but call it what it is:

I, uhh... don't actually know what it is. 

I just wish I could be oblivious to it a bit more. 

Just like I used to be, okay? Is that too hard to ask? Shit. It used to feel like I could just be kind enough for the rest of us, and I still try because we fuckin' have to. Childhood is just like that. I don't even think I'm not a child yet, but then again it's hard to convince myself I'm even human sometimes. It's all desensitized, I'm an amalgamation of everything I've experienced and that is alarming sometimes. It's just one ribbon, sewn between the edges of my skin - I always imagine it's running from my ankle to my elbow to my ears and around again. 

And if I could just find it- like a stray hair, I could just unravel myself and inside maybe is somebody better. Somebody capable of changing things, somebody who can save a goddamn person around this poor ass city. I'm just a fucking walnut! And one day I'll crack and fucking die- well not die, but there's got to be something better hiding away inside of me. And it may just be another rotten thing, but at least it's something alive, it's something human.

Because this can't be how everybody else lives.

I know Justice doesn't.  

I always thought that if I were a victor, I could change the world. But hell, I thought that with everything, I was always convinced I'd be the hero twelve needed. I'd wink and smile and kiss and uproot weeds and pretend they were hyacinths and the world would follow suit and kill my parents. It's just like that sometimes, I suppose. And hell, Avery is enough of my world, and I would like to believe we're doing better than ever living in our dollhouse together. 

So, I'd like to say I've done enough to warrant a good life, and I think that's what makes me human. Sometimes I'll just lay there at the dinner table for two, and stare at my hands and picture all the times I've made Avery laugh and grin and the times my mother would clean up the paint we'd leave on the floorboards. And maybe that's just enough, you know? To prove that I've earned my place here in district twelve, to prove to myself that I'm wealthy in my own right. 

Because I have her, and I love her
and she loves me,
endlessly.