My Dark Paradise

Chapter 7 - " I Just Ride "

I'm leaving, I'm saying bye to Shaniah and all my friends and I'm leaving for another land, away from the nightmares and haunted dreams that seep into my bones every time I step outside of my apartment. I've used the last of my money on buying a shitty car and gave the rest to Alexis and to charity. I am now bankrupt with little money for gas. I'm just going to drive, I don't care where. Just driving anywhere but here. Away from my past, starting a new.

Leaving Brooklyn is not going to be easy, but going back will be even harder. My days of being paid to have meaningless sex are over. I can never do that again, I can't go through the pain of that again. I'm about to live a life without money, without friends or family, just living on my own doing everything for myself, being the independent woman I have always been. I need to learn to not rely on money to make me happy.

As I drive I get a chance to think back on my life, all my mistakes, all the joys. And, overall, I lived a pretty rewarding life, but it was rewarding in all the wrong ways, I had no family, just a hooker roomie that has giant boobs. I never even had a pet. I have no experiences of real love yet. I haven't experienced the things that people are raised with. I have done anything with my life besides get high, have sex and live the dream, or at least I thought it was. I need to discover who I really am. And I think what I am doing will help me on my journey to true happy. I need to experience the things I should of done a long time ago. Let's just hope it doesn't kill me while I'm doing it.

When I see a hotel, without thinking I pull in. I am exhausted and need to sleep and have something to eat, so I get a room and get some Chinese food from down the road. As soon as my head touches that pillow I drift away into a sleep that I never want to wake up from. I dream that I am floating above Brooklyn looking down at myself as I grew up, I see me in High School, I see me at work and that's the moment when I finally realise, I was a hooker, I was the scum of the world that people paid to do what they want, we were slaves to the male community. I remember coming home so exhausted and constantly being on medication for my constant illness from not getting enough sleep, not eating right, over drinking, doing drugs, everything you could think of I had done before and it could have killed me if I wasn't careful. It was no healthy way to live. I now realise that. My life flashed before my eyes but I still live, I have survived my own fate.