Laced » Lip Gallagher [3]

1: bitter tea

"And then there was the blood from your heart on my hands again..."

-

I'm no longer the girl with the addict in her head.

Actually, if we're being honest, I never really was.

What sat inside my foul mind wasn't a crippled addict, with a toothy grin and a sinister laugh. It wasn't a psychotic woman, with boney ribs and brittle hair. None of that was real.

What sat inside my sick head, and corrupted my actions and thoughts, was simply myself. The addict was never real, and neither was her power.

Everything I convinced myself of her was all an allusion. It was like a cover story that I could use to blame all my actions on. She wasn't real, but that didn't mean my mental breakdowns weren't real.

Fact: I come from addicts.

Fact: I have an addictive mentality.

Fact: I am chaos.

What wasn't fact was the woman in my head who controlled me like her puppet. I built the addict in my head, using different pieces from my fucked up childhood in order to self-combust. She was my insecurities, my anger, and my passion, wrapped into one ticking time bomb.

If my downfalls have taught me anything, it's that I was the destruction of my own making. Everything that went wrong in my world would be amplified in my mind, setting me off to the perfect storm. I crashed myself and because of it, I burned.

And now I'm purified.

No remanence of an addict haunts my mind. She's gone and so are my drug-infused imaginations. Rehab didn't cleanse me, but set me in motion to redemption.

And now, I'm on the road to recovery.

And I want a normal life.

"Fuck you, you fucking asshole!" My voice rumbled throughout the streets, as my eyes blazed with fire, watching the man run down the street. "I laughed at all your dumbass jokes the whole morning, the least you could do is leave a fucking decent tip, bitch!"

As the words screamed from my mouth, I realized how quickly and heavily I was breathing. With both legs planted firmly on the ground, I lowered the broom from its weapon stance, and watched as the man ran around the corner and disappeared. I could feel the steam blowing from out of my ears like an angry train while my blood ran hot. Once I knew he was gone for good, I loosened my grip on the broom stick.

When I took a few deep breaths and turned around, I realized Fiona was standing behind me with her hands on her hips. Her jaw was cranked in a disapproving scorn before she finally shook her head. "That's the third customer this week."

Pursing my lips, I took a deep inhale and walked around her and into the dinner. I felt as my rapid-beating heart struggled to come to a slow while I made my way around the bar of the dinner. I was running on adrenaline, and the worst part of it was, I missed the rush.