Phoenix's Lies

After It All Fell Apart

River

TW: Dark Thoughts

The next weeks of school are hard. A week and a half have gone by but the pain is still there. In every part of me. Of the day.

I've hardly seen Nix since our fight and that makes the guilt I'm storing worse, The demon I'm chaining to that emotion screeching as I feed it more and more with every day that passes. The guilt hurts worse, more than I want it to. Than I can afford it too since it comes from something I need. It is what I've been angling for ever since he started to show interest, more than I can handle anyway. Yet now I have it the way I was after does it feel so bad? So painful to bear?

Why does it hurt more than the rumours that circulate in the wake of that party? Rumours that spread since Derek and his asshole buddies had to film what he did to me, what they all did. Film it and circulate it throughout the whole school. A video that cued the words. The taunts I now have thrown at me every day, everywhere I go.

Whore. Slut. Skank, Looks like she enjoyed it enough. Looks like she enjoys it. Wonder if she'd enjoy me too. Slut like all the others in this school. Bitch knows her place, good. I'd love to taste that. Come on, spread those legs sweetheart, you're really good at it. Seems like she's a really kinky bitch. Submissive as fuck too. Must like being tied up. Wonder if she's into it with anyone, you know like for a living?

Stupidly I look for him every time. Every time I hear a hurtful comment. Every leering look and passing catcall. Every time a guy makes a move on me or slaps my ass, checking me out. Every time someone reminded me of what happened and what I was now seen as. That I am still alone.

Not alone as in I am feeling alone in a crowd. That is too shallow, too basic a way to explain how I feel. That is something we all feel, if not every day then at least once in our lives. And it's not the 'when will I find someone to love me?' lonely either. The loneliness I'm meaning I feel after our fight is different to all of that. I'm meaning the aching loneliness inside when you feel like you are truly alone in this world. Like you have nothing and no one left. Like it's so deep an emptiness that you're drowning. Drowning where no one can see, so no one will throw you a lifeline of any sort. They just leave you alone and stranded since they either don't see or they see and look away. But neither group cares.

No one cares.

I take to embracing numbness instead after that fight. After I'm sure I've lost the ability to truly feel after what happened. To hear the comments. Feel what they did, even when I know my body must still show it, feel it under the numbness inside. Meaning my life feels like I'm a spectator looking in. looking in at something good - or bad - whilst someone keeps you down. Down under the water until I can't breathe. Until I'm gone.

Reminding me every minute of every day that I am alone. That I will always be alone.

After it all happens I find I can't handle shit sober anymore. Well, at least any soberer than I need to be to keep El safe and the authorities off our backs. So I do all I can to avoid feeling like that. Alcohol. Pills. Weed. Anything I can find that can dull the pain enough that I don't have to pretend. Pretend that I'm ok. That everything is ok and not falling apart. To pretend to care. That I don't have to be reminded of the voices in my head, the demons screaming at me in their cages and chains as they wrestle to get free. Don't have to remember the crushing weight on my chest from the emptiness. The absence of feeling anything. From being so sad and alone all the time.

Of missing him so much I wanted to die. To fucking disappear somewhere the pain can't find me and I'll be free.

Nix isn't in school when I am. Whether or not he goes when I don't I can't be sure since when I am there I am alone. When I am home I am alone. I keep myself numb. Half with whatever substance I can find that will do the trick and half with music and the old poetry book I dug out of my car that rainy day when he...when we....when it all broke into pieces. Pieces that I still can't find and place back together. One I've slowly been filling ever since NIx had gone when we were twelve. Since I lost him the first time. When I started feeling alone.