Trouble Times Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Reflective chapter. 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, profusely and continuously at that.

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, Donovan and I 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 ok track and there are some moments, where I just cannot do the task at hand. Sometimes when that happened, I needed to change my whole focus and change the scenery too.

This was one of those days, so I look up if there are any gyms nearby and find one that's within walking distance.

My one at home was bespoke to my needs but a more general gym would also cater well to my needs, even if they didn't have everything.

I did miss my lovely home gym though. Having it was was the benefit of only having five occupied rooms, of a very big house.

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 an old time capsule.

Walking through my siblings rooms when cleaning them still made me deeply emotional. It was a clear sign that I hadn't moved on yet. All the stuff they left was still there. I let it stay 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 oldest siblings could look after us.

In fairness, they did take care of everyone. Just not me.

They never enquired about the house. I'm sure they knew that it was occupied now but by who? I wasn't convinced any of them knew that much.

I think that they knew that if they visited, that it would be on sight. They would be correct. I would not hesitate to deck anyone.

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. They sure as hell knew that I wasn't the one who caused my parents death. None of them were stupid.

I was the one who hid from the gang members and saved my own life, it's not my fault my parents didn't listen to me when I told them that we shouldn't go down that alley.

They were the ones who didn't hide when they saw a commotion.

They got caught in a gang fight, and even now, it weighed deeply on my soul.

When I saw what happened, I didn't care that I was still in immense danger. I came out and hugged them and begged them to stay alive.

The gang ran away knowing that they'd just murdered a girls' parents in front of her and I could never talk about that.

They still couldn't find who did it. In my heart, I knew that wasn't ever going to happen.

I could only think about it. Over and over again.

Watching my mother bleed out on the floor, 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 teen. I was taking cocaine, intravenously, at that age. Everyone knew that taking cocaine opened a feeling you could never really feel again.

I still couldn't believe all the times I sniffed ket off a precarious place. I didn't care back then. I was in a k-hole at least three times a week, and for a long time.

I was so ashamed of myself once I snapped out of it for the last time.

It was concerning that I couldn't recall pretty much any of my experiences with ket. I was always in a dissociative state when I took it.

I'm just glad that I saw what it did to people way older than me.

I was also really mad at how these peoples were treated, because a lot of them came from situations so much worse than mine.

They didn't have the support systems like I did, yet the government treated them like second rate citizens, which wasn't fair to any single person.

Even if they did do harm, which a lot of people I knew at the time fi, everyone deserves care for addiction at the very least.

All the drugs, bad me slitting my stomach in terrible highs from a need to get the fat out of my stomach.

At the time I was so skinny. Some may even say gaunt, malnourished because honestly? I was.

I was in the early phases of growing whe started getting starved. I only got access to proper food when I was in juvie and military school.

Donovan didn't see scars 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 maybe nothing was as bad as actually trying to kill myself, but one of these days? I may get to that state again. Lord knows I was already at the end of my tether.

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. But 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, becoming this violent, uncaring, brash girl, than a girl who just grieved normally?

I was just a ten year old girl who just needed her hand held, like the next ten year old who lost his parents.

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