32. Laney
I can’t sleep.
It doesn’t matter how much I lie on the bed, staring at the walls, my brain simply refuses to switch off. The people I want to be with more than anything are the same ones I can’t go anywhere near. If I even try, the press will be on me like a swarm of locusts.
Destroying me and the men I love.
I remember the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. My mom was forever popping pills—uppers, downers—I’m not sure even she knew what she was taking half the time. If I can find something that will turn off the world, if only for a little while, then it will help.
Maybe it’s a slippery slope to head down, but I don’t even care.
What’s going to become of me now, anyway?
What possible future can I have? If it’s one that doesn’t have the guys in it, then what’s the point?
I’ll never have their kind of love again.
I’ll never have people in my life who truly know, who completely understand and get what I went through.
Our shared experiences and trauma have bonded us like nothing else.
I simply can’t picture a future without them in it.
I don’t want a future without them in it.
I’m nauseated and light-headed as I make my way to the bathroom. My legs don’t seem to belong to me, and acid burns up my throat. I’ve never experienced jetlag, but I guess this is what it feels like. My lack of sleep means I’ve completely lost track of the day and my regular sleep pattern.
In the tiny bathroom, the final resting place of my mother, I open the small cabinet.
It has a mirrored door, and I pause halfway, catching a glimpse of my reflection.
I don’t look eighteen years old. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said at least late twenties to early thirties—and a rough early thirties at that.
My hair is a bird’s nest, my skin pale and blotchy, dark circles under my eyes. I think I’d looked better at the cabin.
I experience a sudden pang of longing to go back there, but as swiftly as that sensation hits me, the memory of what Smith and his men did to me arrives on its tail.
We can never go back. What good memories we had there have been ruined. Now it’s tainted with pain and violence.
I gulp back a sob and reached into the cabinet. Multiple bottles of pills are within reach, so I pick up the nearest and check the prescription. I have no idea what the pills do, but I tip a couple into my palm. Then I take down another bottle and do the same. It should be enough to knock me out.
But what if I want more?
I shake the thought from my head.
The razor blade on the side draws my attention.
It would be easy, wouldn’t it? Just a few handfuls of pills, a couple of good drinks from the bottle of vodka, then some cuts up my wrist—vertically, not horizontally—and I could close my eyes and not have to worry about waking up.
It would be relatively painless, except for the razor, but if I drink enough and take enough pills before I do that part, I’m sure I won’t feel much.
Besides, the pain of a razor cut is nothing compared to the pain in my heart. My whole chest feels as though it’s opened up and become a yawning chasm, and now I’m exposed and raw.
I’m not strong enough to handle this.
For now, the pull of oblivion releases its grip, and I take the pills back to bed with me.