BLOOD BANK - LN4

002

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002 , the great and the grieved
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    TWENTY-ONE YEAR OLD lenora found herself at some fancy hotel bar yet again. She was dressed in her best clothing and jewerly and was chatting with the man sat beside her.

He was clad in a black suit and tie with some rolex around his wrist, the only thought on his mind was taking her back to his hotel room. This was how lenora spent most of her nights now.

She knew it was sad but it fit right in with the rest of her life, so why not.

Tonight was even worse though and the cold December breeze that blew through the new york city streets did nothing to help.

"MAX VERSTAPPEN, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, IS CHAMPION OF THE WORLD"

"MAX VERSTAPPEN YOU ARE THE WORLD CHAMPION'

The words had been echoing in her head ever since it happened, it made her nauseous.

Champion of the god damn world. Her brother was champion of the world and she didn't even say congrats.

She knew she should've sent a text, should've called, should've been there. She listened to the way he celebrated on the radio, truth be told she broke down the second she heard it and immediately went to the nearest bar she could find.

She wanted to be there to celebrate with him, with his friends, his team, their family. She wanted to run up to him and say she was proud of him.

She wanted to sit in his living room and talk to him about everything that had happened when she was away.

AT FIFTEEN, LENORA was trying to figure out who she was and what she wanted to be and at twenty-one she was doing the exact same thing.

Sliding down the wall of her one bedroom apartment with her head in her hands and tears in her eyes.

She was drunk on some cheap wine from the corner store that she had drank straight out of the bottle, and she had spent the past 20 minutes talking to the kitchen cabinets and pretending they responded.

Lenora knew she could do better than this but she couldn't bring herself to care, instead she sat on her floor and realised she had no idea what she was doing.

A month ago she showed up to the hospital again and they asked the same question they always did.

"are you a danger to yourself or others?"

and lenora didn't have an answer anymore.

Does purposely ruining your life count as being a danger to yourself? Is self sabotage self harm? It was starting to feel like it.

Her therapist told her she should go back to belgium, get some form of closure. But what was the closure for? Was it realising they didn't need her anymore, or finally accepting that it would never be the same again?

The topic of her family was still an open wound, and god did it hurt when it bled but the pain let her know she had someone, at some point in time she had someone that was close enough to her that they could hurt her. It was fucked up and unhealthy, sure, she knew that, but it reminded her that she wasn't always this unloveable.

A YEAR LATER, 22 year old lenora was on a one way flight time maastricht. She had sold her apartment and quit her job as an interior designer and booked the flight without even thinking about it.

At 10 years old lenora did not have a plan for life, she didn't expect to make it past the age of 13. She never fantasised about dream colleges or jobs. She never talked about the house she wanted or what she would want her husband to look like, because frankly she thought she would be dead before then.

So now she was 22 years old, with no college degree and no job, no house or even apartment and no plan on getting married anytime soon.

If lenora could go back in time she would do three things; she would talk to her brother more, and she wouldn't go to new york, but most of all she would make more of a life plan than simply dying early, because that clearly wasn't working out.

AS SHE SAT on the plane she was reminded of the one memory with her dad that she thought about a lot. It was 3am and she was sat in the dimly lit kitchen, the only light on was the oven light. She was seventeen years old and drunk on some cheap vodka when her dad stumbled through the door.

He had just gotten back from a night out with his friends, celebrating max winning the 2017 Malaysian gp. He was drunk off his mind and had probably drank the equivalent of his weight, somehow he made it home that night. Whether that was a blessing or a curse she didn't know.

He sat next to her on the kitchen stool and they were silent for a few minutes. Lenora was standing up and about to make her way back to her room when her dad said something that made her stop in her tracks. "i'm sorry" he said.

She turned her head to look at him, her eyes wide. His head still looking down at the counter, not looking up at her.

"okay. I'm sorry too" she says quietly, she felt like she could throw up as she walked back to her room. The mix of vodka and emotions did nothing to help the nausea.

She cried herself to sleep that night and in the morning the look in her dad's eyes told her he had long forgotten about it.

He had always told her she remembered too much, that she should just get over it and forget about it, to stop holding onto the past. She didn't understand how she was meant to do that though. Where do you put the past? What are you meant to do with all the memories you once made with all the people you once knew?

Lenora lived in the past, it was all she knew. She couldn't make new memories knowing she wasn't over the old ones, it was a bad trait to have but she was only seventeen. And when your dad is always angry and your brother is trying to escape his fate of volatility you do not want to make more memories.

Lenora turned her dads anger into some unspoken competition. She wanted to be angrier then him, outdo him in the only way she could. And if that meant becoming someone she didn't want to be, then so be it, she needed the warmth of knowing she one upped her father in something, anything

And when she was angry and looked into the mirror there was a sickening feeling of familiarity, like her dad was staring back at her

They looked nothing alike but they looked so alike at the same time. She had her mom's lips but the words that tumbled out of them were so much like her fathers that they were almost mistakable.

"We are now touching down in maastricht"

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