From the Other Side of My Bed

20. Wolf In Disguise

Shall we have some tea?

                                   -

I believe it was the end of 2015 for a couple hours before we entered the new year with all the pomp and glamour when I was invited to a house party Jovanni's aunt was throwing, and Jaxon insisted on me going.
Shit, we even went with a cousin or female friend of Jovanni's to my house to ask my dad if I could go to their house for New Year's Eve. My dad reluctantly let me go. I mean at that point I feel he left powerless with the growing rebel I was becoming. And the thing was that unlike my siblings who still feared him, I could not give less of a fuck about my dad back then. If he would have tried hitting me, shit I would have rocked his life. That's how down bad I was.
Anyways, this aunt's house was in Dobson ranch, somewhere there but I cannot remember where exactly. Dobson ranch is a maze of houses and lakes, it's difficult to figure it out. Anyways so we got to the house and fuck, when we opened the door, already there was about 10 motherfuckers in that bitch.
It was packed with dudes and girls just as young as me with hoe outfits and I remember thinking to myself, wrongly, that I should have had wore less. I was often wearing black clothing, with my timberland's on or combat boots and gold chains. My long, curly hair just fell carelessly past my butt and my eyes were opaqued by my heavy makeup. Even Jaxon once told me I looked better without makeup. But I didn't care. The makeup made a statement:
I was unknown.
I wasn't Madeline.
I was somebody else.

The house had leftover Christmas lights hanging from all corners of the house and even still had the Christmas tree up. The house looked really homely with a nice sofa and set and pictures up on the walls and it smelled of baked goods. In fact, in the kitchen they were making edibles. Well, the "aunt" was making the edibles.
To little 14,15.17 and up year olds who came to get fucked up, which now it sounds weird. I guess she wanted us to at least do it with supervision. But I guess as the night went by, she disappeared.
It was a fun party; Jaxon was high out of his mind.
He had made a peanut and jelly sandwich and threw some mushrooms in it and after 15 mins, he was tripping.
"Babe, you have no idea in what worlds I'm at right now." He said, looking at the ceiling all amused and happy as we sat on the sofa to chill out.
I remember us kissing and hugging, laughing and sharing anecdotes about how beer sucks when I took a glimpse of Jovanni looking at us from a far. He had a blond girl on his lap which he was touching and kissing around, and when I look up to him in that moment, he started making out with her, with his eyes open, staring at me.
It was fucking weird.
It gave me goosebumps.
Like no one has ever done that in front of me or maybe I was drunk but I swear I saw that. On how he made out with that girl while he kept trying to make eye contact with me. I don't know that night was insane.
I don't even remember how I got home.
-

"Jaxon got locked up, dude." I told Lacey over the phone as I was walking toward her apartments. She and her mom lived fairly close to me, to a walking distance almost. "What do you mean locked up? Is this for sure?"
"Of course, it is. You think I'm tripping? Call Jovanni. This morning when I went to see him, his sister told me he went in last night. I never thought it was that bad..."
"Bad what? What aren't you telling me?"
And the truth was that I never wanted to tell her it was my fault.

So, what happened was that I kept spending the night at his house way too much, and fighting loudly with him. We just didn't match well, him and i.
It was always something.
Whether I talked to guys, or that he cheated on me with his ex, or just overall fighting. And his adoptive mom had it one day. I remember we were fighting in his room, over some stupid shit when we heard his adoptive mom started screaming at us to stop fighting. Jaxon, already annoyed and angry, swing the door open and shut it behind him as he went to confront her. The two engaged into a very nasty fight, with her saying "this isn't a whorehouse where you bring any whore around." And that's when he shouted:
"She isn't a whore unlike you!" and then there was a big crash of something, it sounded like he broke a vase and then there was that gasp from me and his adoptive mom, then silence. I heard his angry footsteps coming toward the room I was in and I just froze.
I remember very clearly what he was wearing.
Baggy blue jeans and a silver t shirt with gold chain on and his timberlands made the footsteps scarier as he walked in.
He comes toward me and cups my face in his hands and kisses me.
"I'm sorry you had to go through that."
"It's cool."
I didn't know what else to say, because his mom started again with the threats that she was going to call the cops and take me away and all of this bullshit. And just things went south.
Long story short, his sister came and tried to get him to go to rehab.
That maybe the drugs were making him this way. And plus, I was a very young girl and that could affect him in the long run. It was all just crazy, and we were just locked up in his room while his mom and sister screamed at us from the other side of the door. Until they found a key to open the door and his sister went in.
Both siblings engaged in a verbal altercation which I couldn't jump into, despite how badly they spoke of me. I just froze.
The bad thing, or what made it go all wrong was when his sister tried to calm him down by trying to touch his shoulder or grab his hands, begging him to go to rehab.
He just kept telling her to back away from him, shoving away her hands and just telling her to give him space until he couldn't no more, and he slapped her and shoved her to the floor as he lost his cool.
They eventually called the cops.
And I was taken away.

-
I didn't get like, real withdrawals as I did when I was back at the apartment, but I feared my depression. While with Jaxon, and all the partying and doing drugs just shut down the voices in my head and gave me meaning. And now I didn't have anything. I felt lost. I felt unprotected, all alone.
My days turned dark, and my nights were restless, I just wanted to kill myself.
Kill myself.
Kill myself.

That's what played in my head until one day I tried to.
Of course, it was a failure.
You see me here, telling you this.
It's weird, you know, attempts and all because you just act on impulse.
It's not your fault to feel and act that way when for the longest you tried to make everything better, and now it seems you're only viable option is to, well, kill yourself. Some people use pills, or bleach, I tried with knife. God, the cold blade against throat gave me a feeling of almost freedom. I remember I stood there, in the shed by my room that we have at the ugly house and contemplated the feelings I experience.
Grief.
Loss.
Pain.
Emptiness.
Motherless.
Loveless.
All alone. And that was the part it hurt more. I was alone in this world. Everyone had moved on from mom. Nik moved on from me and now I just was stuck there. Forever feeling empty. I remember I wrote a bunch of suicidal notes to people who never mattered, except nik. He mattered.
I begged him to be happy and to never think of me. I wanted him to live a peaceful life away from my storm. I wished him the best. That he finds someone who loved him right. And I can tell you know, he did. Makes me happy to know that now. But back then I feared he would never emotionally move on from me.
I was so wrong but anyways.
The voices in my head told me to do it.
To slash my throat open.
To not worry about anything, that they got me.
And I got them just playing repeatedly their chant of:

Deranged. Deranged. Deranged. Deranged.

I asked that my end wouldn't hurt but when the blade cut through my skin and made it bleed, making it drip down my hand, I freaked out by feeling the warmth of it. It felt I was killing a living thing.
Which its weird because I am trying to kill a living thing.
Me.
I wish I never attempted.
Because the guilt of still being alive ate me up inside.

-

Since I didn't have Jaxon with me anymore, I (wrongly) became friends with Jovanni.
He was much different than Jaxon.
In comparison, he was rougher, more controlled, mysterious and should I say, dangerous? He had been in gangs before. In fact, when I started hanging out with him, he trusted in me how much he regretted it because they made him do stuff, he now wouldn't do to others. He looked in the surfaced as someone not to fuck with, but I thought that with me, I could get his other side out.
His other side being (wrongly) more honest, kinder and more reliable.
I genuinely thought he had become my friend, at some point I thought, (wrongly) that he was my best friend. I never wanted to date him.
Never.
He had a fling with Lacey, I couldn't do that to her. but on top of that, I never ever liked him physically or emotionally or anything. I wanted to be his friend. He looked like a good friend to Jaxon. Plus, he was kind to me.
He would take me to parties and look out for me, even held my hair when I throw up on some bushes on our way home. A thug like him, being gentle?
I wish Madeline knew what was coming.