Lilith (old version)

Chapter 23

Lilith

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.

I send a quick text to Enzo before leaving to head to my house, explaining that I'm sleeping over at Ashley's. Of course from mine and her point of view that's an unbelievable lie, but from Enzo's stance it seems perfectly acceptable. He doesn't know just how far we've drifted because he still doesn't know me, not really.

But it again reminds me how grateful I am that I've kept so much about myself secret, because if I had been open with him I'd never be able to leave his house. Saying that makes me realise again just how unusual his behaviour is, but the thing is I can't really blame him. My situation is incredibly unique and there's no real guide book on how to help your girlfriend who's being abused by her father. Even so, I just can't live like that. I can't trust him, not fully, and because of that I can't ever rely on him. 

I need to keep in contact with my parents and continue to pay the bills so when I need to I still have a place to stay for when everything goes to shit with Enzo. Which from the looks of things probably won't be long. 

It's not that I don't care about Enzo, or even that I don't like him, because I do. I do care about him, and I do like him, but it's not enough. On paper he's perfect for me, but it just doesn't feel right in person. I so badly wish it worked out and that I could trust him fully, because we could truly be perfect together, but I just don't see that happening anytime soon.

The sound of the bus coming around the corner jolts me away from my thoughts, it's been over a week now since I last went home and the bus ride is sure to fill me with further dread of what's to come.

As soon as I'm sat on the bus I pull out the bottle of vodka from my bag, taking deep swigs from it when the driver isn't looking. The burn helps soothe the anxiety coursing through me but the real reason I'm drinking is because it's the only way to prevent the pain of tonight overtaking me. I just need something to take the edge of slightly, just to make it that bit more bearable. 

I just hope no permanent damage is done. It's sort of funny, that whenever I think of being killed tonight by my fathers hands instinctively fills me with terror but then then that natural survival instinct is shut down by my conscious. I know that dying tonight would most likely be a mercy compared to having to keep living. It's not even my past trauma or current situation which makes me so badly wish for my life to be over, it's the unending nothingness inside myself. The dark hole that just seems to grow larger as days pass.

That is the one thing I truly can't outrun, can't escape from. It feels like a death sentence, a punishment of some sort for some ignorant sin I committed. I wish it would swallow me whole. That dark void. I wish it would finish me off. It almost did once before, years ago. I became an empty husk, barely leaving my room and only doing so to get high or drunk. It was the closest I've felt to death before, and as awful as it felt at the time I have a weird sort of attachment to that period of my life. It was the lowest of lows, and that brought me the most comfort of anything in my whole life. 

The vibrations of the bus flowing through me dull my thoughts into quiet whispers, but by the time I'm at the damaged front gate of my house one word circles around my mind incessantly; broken.