Cigarettes & Strawberries - A Memoir

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Inhale... And exhale the smoke. I need it. Need it to get by. To smooth my rough edges. To forget the lies that I have to tell all the time.

My parents separated not too long ago. Dad left for another woman. Another woman that's eerily similar to myself. A woman thats life mirrors mine almost perfectly. A woman I hate because I can't hate her.

I never wanted to accept her. But she was a little too kind and too caring for me to despise her. For me to hate her like my mom says I should. But I don't. And I can't tell my mother that or it'll break her heart. Tear it into even tinier pieces than it had been before from my dad's own handiwork.

So, to cope, I smoke anything I can get my hands on. Weed, vapes, cigarettes, it doesn't really matter what it is as long as it makes me feel something. Alive in the duller version life has taken on lately.

The air in my lungs feels tight, heavy. Like it can't wait to escape me, push everything out and into the open. The secrets both my mother and father have made me keep.

Truth be told I love both of my parents dearly, but they use me all too often. Use my ability to lie for their own sakes. Make me a pawn in the game they're playing.

My mom always loses. I wish she would come out victorious just once, because maybe then she'll have more of a will to live. But for now we're stuck in an endless cycle of loss and misery, her and I. We're on the receiving end of a shit storm.

A storm that's been brewing for years. I've always known my father had wandering eyes, but I never knew his heart wandered along with it. And now he's found himself someone he claims he truly belongs with, and with that I have no idea what to do. Do I sit back and allow him to be happy with a woman that isn't my mother? A woman that took him from her?

Really what can I do? I can't make him go back to my mother, can't even make him be nice to her. He's full of smoke. Lies and stories and secrets I never want to know. One thing I know for sure, he's chosen her. Her family. Her lifestyle. Not the woman he spent half of his life with. But the woman that tempted him. The one that he cheated on my mother with for eight long months before so much as saying anything about wanting to leave. Another secret I have to keep.

I'm full of anger and sadness and guilt. I can't seem to make the whirlpool of emotions go away. Can't swim out of my own despair. The only choice I have left is to let it swallow me whole. Take over my being. But I don't want to. I fight my emotions down and let the world believe that I can take it. But the truth is, I'm so close to cracking. To crumbling into a beautiful purple powder.

Why purple? Well I'd say I'm a mix of a beautiful gloomy blue, and a passionate angry red. Purple is the only color I can relate to. Mysterious, hiding everything within. Purple is the color for people that bare the weight of their world on their shoulders, similar to Atlas. I'd say there's something strong in that mix, but I certainly can't say I feel strong. I feel about as resilient as a piece of paper. It's surprising that I've managed to last this long.

Not that that's up to me. I've tried taking my own life before, but it never works. I always end up waking up. Seeing the sun rise through the sky, hearing the birds chirp. Life goes on as they say, and apparently they're talking about mine.