Desire C.B

31

Either way by Demi Lovato is the anthem of this chapter. 

T/W: Accidental self harm - no objects used, mentions of blood, mentions of weed
Her nails dig into her arm and it draws blood*^

Don't read if the idea of relapsing will be triggering to you. If you need, DM me and I will tell you what happens. Put yourself first.

*Leighton's POV*

I wanted to smoke in the worst way, to where I felt like there was the deepest itch under my skin, and I just couldn't scratch it.

I didn't want to use it to forget anything or replace my feeling, but because I just wanted to relax. I'm tired of being stressed and tense. That's how I got into weed in the first place. It was never supposed to go this far and I hate that I've ruined it for myself. I hate that I can't just leisurely do it. That it's become a craving. An addiction. 

I'm sitting in my grandparents garden, watching the sun start to rise and listening to the chirps of birds as I thought about our conversation last night, trying to ignore the itch.

I have a FaceTime call with Gemma at 5am because it would be noon back at home, so I've created a habit of getting up early to prepare myself for her overly excited self. 

You only make that mistake once. An overly excited screaming 6 month old when you just woke up was a recipe for disaster of giving me a headache later that day.

My Nonno was up with Mormor in the kitchen, the three of us saying a brief good morning before I slipped out onto the back patio, one of Colby's XPLR hoodies keeping me warm. I was slightly apprehensive about throwing it on this morning, but I didn't want to dig around in the room to find one of my own and possibly wake up Colby.

Something that has been on my mind a lot this morning is the words I love you and how much weight they hold. It's something that Colby doesn't say all the time.. but he's been saying it a lot more lately, and sometimes I just wish I could do the same. He's been so forward with our relationship — if that's even what we want to call this, that sometimes it feels overwhelming. I tend to get stuck in this headspace of wanting life to be a fairytale, and I know I put extremely high expectations on people; I just want everything to be different. I wanted to be different. I'm tired of history repeating itself.

Something people don't understand is how past relationships affect you. I'm not talking oh we broke up and it was really hard. It's more complex than that. My ex, my high school sweetheart, was there when I found out I was an addict. The moment I admitted it to myself was one of the worst days of my life. He was there doing it with me.. until he saw how bad it got, and then he turned against me. Not only was that journey really hard, but now we have a daughter together. I knew that we'd never fully cut ties. After all, he held a lot of my firsts. He plays the lead role in my memories... but no one thinks about what kind of mental torture it is. It was so hard to be in a fresh breakup and then have to share this pregnancy with him. Now, over a year later, we're trying to co-parent, but even that doesn't look right.

I just wanted to see that light at the end of the tunnel and have it all feel so serene. Instead, I felt like I was being tossed in another landfill every single day, just trying to find my way out. I just wanted something in my life to appear like the movies. I wanted to be able to relate to cliché cheesy books. I wanted that normalcy of understanding simple things, but the second I admitted I was an addict, and then that pregnancy test showed two lines... I knew I'd have nothing of the sorts.  Learning to adjust your mindset is incredibly hard, especially when you've always held these high expectations since you were just a little baby. After all; who didn't want to live in a fairytale?