Trouble Times Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Reflective character. Major TW. Triggering content: mentions of: homicide, gangs, suicide, addiction.)

You can totally skip the second part of this chapter and be fine, it's just her going through some stuff and thinking.

Lola was so upset, she was near inconsolable about losing Donovan even if it was only a temporary stint due to Shepherd's lack of a brain.

I don't know if they'd ever be the same unless Donovan got into the real deep shit with her and apologised and profusely and continuously.

I don't think that was going to happen any time soon.

I just needed it to happen because it made me realise that Lola and Donovan were what Jess and I were.  

Jess and Lola were the slightly troublesome children who liked to cause trouble here and there and me and Donovan were the really naughty ones who liked to break all the rules and push limits.

Donovan was pushing the limits too far this time and I knew at a point, he could even lose Lola if he kept this act up for any longer.

When I get back that night, it's hard to keep my focus and there were sometimes where I just couldn't do it and would have to move tasks completely.

This was one of those times and I look up if there are any gyms nearby and find one that's within walking distance. I knew I'd be going now that I didn't have my one at home.

That's what the benefit of only having two rooms of a very big house occupied meant.

It doesn't mean that the space didn't bother me, because it did. Every time I walked through that house, it was like was walking through some old time capsule and walking through their rooms when cleaning them was a clear sign that I hadn't moved on yet. All the stuff they left was still there.

I remember the day they told us we were leaving, I left most of my stuff here thinking we'd be back when my siblings could look after us and they did take care of the rest of them after moving out of Joni's. They never enquired about the house and I'm sure they knew that it was occupied now but by who, I wasn't convinced. I had an inkling that they did though.

I think that they knew that if they visited, that it would be on sight and they would be correct.

I had 10 older siblings and all of them abandoned me.

I don't care if they were coddled, or manipulated because they knew it was wrong and they sure as hell knew that I wasn't the one who caused my parents death.

I was the one who hid from the gangsters and saved my own life, they didn't listen to me when I told them that we shouldn't go down that alley and they were the ones who didn't hide when they saw a commotion.

They got caught in a gang fight and it was upsetting. When I saw what happened, I didn't care. I came out and hugged them and begged them to stay alive. The gangsters ran away knowing that they'd just murdered a girls parents in front of her and I could never talk about that.

I could only think about it. Over and over again, watching my mother bleed out on the floor and watching my father get shot in the mouth. He died immediately.

I saw his brains. Oh God. I saw his brains.

I hunch over the island as I think about all the times I stuck a needle in my arm, it was a countable amount of times but I should have never done that, especially as a child because everyone knew that taking cocaine opened a feeling you could never really feel again.

I'm just glad that I saw what it did to people way older than me and also really mad at how these peoples were treated because a lot of them came from situations so much worse than mine and they didn't have the support systems like I did, yet the government treated them like second rate citizens who did it to themselves.

Even if they did, everyone deserves care for addiction because it kills.

It had me slitting my stomach in terrible highs from a need to get the fat out of my stomach when I was skinny and some many even say gaunt and malnourished because I was.

I was growing when I was started becoming starved and I only got access to proper food when I was in juvie and military school.

Donovan didn't see cut arms on my arms because they were covered in tattoo but if he looked closer, he might see some left over. There were some all over my stomach and thighs and the worst part is, I'm not better.

A lot of them were fresh. I beat myself up even more every time I cut myself but I couldn't stop.

Nothing was as bad as me trying to kill myself through drinking though, at least that's I tried to tell myself. Or actually trying to kill myself but one of these days it might come to that again.

I know I had Courtney and Arthur here with me right now and that literally anyone from my family in Alevana would come and visit me right now if I even mentioned wanting to kill myself because they sort of thought I was doing better. But I wasn't. I lied. It's what a delinquent like me does. Lie. Lie about my feelings. Cheat. Cheat myself of a normal life.

I also know that if I didn't become a delinquent, I'd be dead. So that left me in an odd place because how was I always better off being someone who I never really was and becoming this violent, uncaring, brash girl than a girl who just grieved normally. Than a ten year old girl who just needed her hand held like the next ten year old who lost her parents.

That's what I didn't understand and that's why I hated all my siblings and their so-called 'stand-in parents.'