noah lachlan, district nine | fin (cb)

You weren't always like this.

Your fists weren't always shades black and blue, and scars weren't carved into your skin with blood-stained knives. But once upon a time, you were someone else, a boy who was young and scared, grasping onto his mother's fingertips because that's as far as he could reach. You didn't yet understand the world, you were caught up in getting spooked by the strangers who knocked at the door and tripping over your mispronounced words when you were yelled at.

Maybe it would have been easier if your mother never got sick. You like to think you'd be different then, maybe then you wouldn't choke down bottles of vodka or punch a guy just for a little cash. Maybe then when you smiled it would mean something.

But back then you were so far lost in your own desperation that you let yourself ignore it, all of the broken bones and blood-soaked coin purses. You drowned yourself in whiskey and vodka and boys so that when you woke up the next morning, knuckles split and arms draped around the neck of some random guy, you would have something to blame it on.

And when the booze and the sex don't work, you tell yourself over and over again that one day it will have been worth it, that everything you have done was for a reason.

At some point you've told yourself it enough that you even start to believe it.