Chapter 68
Mireya
Play - Dark Paradise by Lana Del Rey
Falling back to survive
Damien’s voice is repeating that it’s going to be okay is still in my head.
I killed this man, and I don’t know why I don’t regret it. Every time I closed my eyes it came back wrong, like my brain couldn’t decide how much of it I deserved to keep seeing.
So I stopped closing them. Instead I took another shower, then another, focusing on the scars on my body, as if it would validate what I did.
This is what happens when a man approaches you, Mireya. They hurt you, so you hurt yourself harder to erase it. This is what fucking happens to you.
Hot water is running down my face, my skin is turning red, and my eyes are closed. I stand there until the idea of being clean stopped meaning anything because I couldn’t find where it was supposed to start.
If I stayed under the water long enough it would stop being part of me. The abuse, the pain coming from memories of me not being strong enough to push a man away from me.
How many times can you fail yourself before it becomes your personality, Mireya?
I forced myself to play with Blue. But my hands won’t stay still. I drop things without noticing. I stop mid-action and forget why I started. I draw weird lines in my sketchbook then stop to smoke.
Nothing is enough. At some point I realize I’m just sitting on the floor again.
My phone is somewhere nearby lighting up and going dark and I don’t look at it because I already know what it will say without reading it. Hayzel asking where I am, or asking if I’m okay. I am not. And she doesn’t need to stress herself out because her best friend is fucking stupid.
My legs finally decide to do something and I walk to the bathroom knowing exactly what to do. The mirror shows me everything back exactly as it is. Me, worn down, sad, tired and exhausted. My stomach tightens before anything even happens, like my body is already remembering for me.
It starts in my head before I agree to listen to the voice. The loud one that has always been there waiting for the moment I get tired to remind me how destroyed my mind is.
You’re going to do it again. You’re going to use it again. Can you feel it already?
I open the makeup bag. The plastic bag with white powder is still there.
Take me.
Little miss sad eyes is back again.
Little miss sad eyes standing in a bathroom she keeps pretending will be the last time
I make a line with the palette my mom loved to use to cover up her bruises. I can feel my face changing before anything even happens, that slow collapse, the familiar surrender I keep mistaking for control. And I do it.
It burns at first, then it settles. And the world stops shaking. It’s working and I hate that I’m glad it does. It always works.
You always come back here.
You always come back here.
The voice repeats it, until I can hear myself saying this quote over and over again. It becomes the truth, it becomes a scream.
Little miss sad eyes, you already know how this ends.
I hate how quickly my brain calls that peace. I stay there even after it passes, breathing wrong, staring at the sink like it might explain why I keep returning to what destroys me gently enough for me to miss it. When I finally look up, the mirror is already waiting.
She’s here. Looking back at me like she knows I’m going to forgive her too soon. Because she knows I always do.
I deserve peace. I deserve to feel the rage. I deserve to let it out.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and it shakes harder now. I’m so stupid, I’m so stupid but it’s too late now. I am stupid and I will never fail coming back to it.
I walk back to the room, Blue shifts in his sleep, completely unbothered by the version of me moving through the room like this.
I was supposed to be better than this. I thought I had time to change. I thought weeks meant something. It doesn’t feel like it meant anything now. It just feels like a pause before I became this again.
“I always do this,” I say, it just leaves my mouth and disappears. I say it again and again.
Feel it, and don’t let it destroy you.