Finally Free

50

S O P H I A | closure

Did you miss me Sophie?

For three weeks, that's all I've heard. The nightmares weren't bad at first. Just a few flashes in my mind as I slept, something that could be cured with a little melatonin. As the nights went on, they got worse. It felt like I was in the exact same place that I was when I first moved to California.

Ever since my relapse, I've been living a pipe dream that I was okay. I constantly told myself that I was whole again, but the thing about my family is that we know how to put up a front, we make everyone believe that we're okay, and if we say it out loud enough, we'll start to convince ourselves. Saying I'm fine has become muscle memory at this point, it's a reflex.

Prom was the last night I felt like myself. That was 14 days ago. After that it feels like all the positive energy left in my body has been slowly pouring out, and I can't catch a fucking break.

Trauma response is different for everyone, or so it has been explained to me.

I've learned in this past year that my trauma likes to come in waves. It begins to heighten when my body starts to adapt to normalcy. It's as if my mind and body doesn't want me to settle down and be happy.

It feels like I don't want myself to be happy. Who did I piss off in the universe for this to be my karmic debt?

Bipolar PTSD.

I'm fine one day and a mess the next. The repetition is starting to take its toll on me. My life is becoming a pattern. Fall apart, cry way too much, relapse, someone puts me together, repeat. An addict's cycle.

Last night at two in the morning I went downstairs and just stared at a bottle of tequila because I had dreamt that Owen videotaped the assault and posted it for the whole world to see. I'm not proud of it but before that I wandered into Liam's bathroom, considering taking some of his prozac just to feel something. The rubber band snap treatment doesn't even work anymore.

He'd know they were missing so instead I went into the back of the pantry where my mother keeps the alcohol she thinks I don't know about. It's behind a wooden board in the spice cabinet. I numbly sat down on the dark floors, hugging my knees to my chest, the bottle sitting a foot in front of me.

Quietly panting I used all my strength to not take a sip. I looked like a basket case, rocking back and forth, desperate to stay sober. It's never been this hard, something has changed, it's just empty temptation.

An hour later, I ended up baking snicker doodle cookies to take my mind off the idea of being intoxicated. I ate six by the time the sun came up.

I think about getting high all the time. I can't sleep, I either overeat or don't eat at all, I'm incapacitated because getting high is all I can ever think about now. When I'm at school, I want to get high. When it's family movie night and we're watching Singing in the Rain, I think about getting high. The worst part is I think about it while out with Carter. I can't even appreciate all he's done for me because there is nothing else in my mind

The guilt of it is eating me alive.

I ask myself a lot, "How did I even end up like this?"

My life in New York was just an endless void of parties I couldn't attend and backstabbing trust fund brats. I went through the days feeling nothing. Drugs made me feel something. It was nothing at first, just a little weed at a party. Then I discovered my weak spot, painkillers and narcotics. I fell under their spell, they controlled me and my impulses.

I've only done heroin twice in my life, I hate needles. I only took cocaine at parties and I've never done meth. I've watched Rent so many times that I know there are too many risks of getting AIDS from taking drugs by injection, so I was introduced to paracetamol and percocet. Owen introduced me to them, he got me hooked.