The Lines Between Us | ✔

|.30.|

September 30th, 4:23 am

Bella

It's my birthday today.

It's my birthday, and I'm sat on the ground, drinking my weight in alcohol. I thought it was over yesterday. I thought I finally accepted that my mom was gone for good. I thought that I was done. The grief, the anger. Everything.

But it hasn't.

I woke an hour ago, writhing in pain. I'm not even too sure it is real, the pain. But I do know that I can't take it anymore. I can feel my heart breaking. Shard by shard. Like a bullet through glass, only slower and more excruciating.

I thought yesterday that I was happy. But that was only the outside. Now I hate myself for even having a second of fun. I deserve the pain. Before, I tried so hard to make it go away, to think of all the good things that happened since I left home. But there's nothing more I can do. I just have to accept it.

I'm angry now, but it's numbed by the liquid in my veins. It's quite contradictory, to be honest — the alcohol hides the pain for a while, but it always comes back when I wake up. A constant reminder that I can't be happy. But I don't mind the morning pain, as I can just drink again. Restart the cycle.

I'm sat on the ground. Not the floor. I'm outside, in the cold, in only Ash's jumper and a pair of shorts. I can barely feel the temperature anymore, the substance heating my body up from the inside. It's as if it's Christmas again, and I'm drinking hot cocoa with my mom and dad by the fire.

I'm not. I'm sat in the cold trying to shoot those thoughts from my mind.

I never thought college would be like this. I thought I would be that girl. The one who studied all day. Read books. Took English just to become an international writer. I never thought it would be this. A wasted corpse with no talent left.

I might as well not even exist.

Life is funny to me. 

We all live to die, so what is even the point of living in the first place?

Nothing's unique before. I've never done anything that somebody else hasn't already. Everything is a universal experience. Even down to the jokes, I thought I created. The knock I tap on every door. The crooked smile on my lips. It's all been done before. 

I'm just living somebody else's life at this point.

My hands start to tingle in the cold. Standing up, I wobble myself through the front door, not bothering to lock it. I stumble to the kitchen, sitting on the marble. It isn't much warmer.

I can't believe I'm officially eighteen.

Down to the minute, too. 

I remember my parents telling me the story of my birth. How it took 18 hours of labor for me to be born. 4:26 in the morning. 8lb 2.  I was enormous, they would tell me. The topic would come up every birthday, even still after dad passed. Now, I tell it to myself.

It's a big achievement for me, becoming eighteen. I'm an adult. I've been waiting for it my whole life — my moment of freedom. I could start making my own decisions. But, in reality, it feels like I've been thrown in the deep end. To drown. I've turned into one of those people I never wished to be. The kind of person you see in the street and question whether they are okay.  The kind of person you only see once.

I hate that all everyone says is 'you're going to be okay.' It's such a massive lie. I try to put on a fake smile, but they can tell. I see people in school giving me the same treatement. The side-eye. Not even in a bad way, just concerned for me.