The Choices We Make

Chaos

Some days, everything she touches crumble. She is well aware, so when the morning starts with a bang (literally, as she manages to hit a parked car, even with an entire parking lot at her disposal) she knows it will ripple throughout the day.

On days like this, she closes the door on the outside world as much as possible, just to avoid getting other people caught in her fuck-ups. At least, while being the queen of the clumsy, and ever so masterful at the art of complete and utter chaos, she can keep other people from being hurt.

She's tense. So tense she knows her body will ache tomorrow, as if she's had a good workout. She's experiences it often enough.

She always keep a supply of diet drinks. It's not to lose weight (although she could probably stand to lose a pound or two.. or hundred). It's for the days when her touch seems lethal, her voice grows sarcastic, and her stomach is so much a ball of tense nerves and muscle she knows nothing solid will be kept. She gets by on cigarettes and coffee, and an internal monologue so saturated with sarcastic self loathing it sometimes makes her laugh. A short, cold cackle.

When she has to interact with other people, she plasters on a smiling face. She's good at it, can even make the fake warmth reach her eyes when she doesn't want to be exposed. She mocks herself with one-liners, make light of every situation eating at her soul, and let them think what she will. She's been accused enough times of not comprehending the seriousness of situations before her, people not seeing that her fight-or-flight instinct is fully engaged, and that this is her fleeing. Nobody chastises one that already mocks themselves. It's hard to be angry at a warm smile and a friendly demeanour. She's perfected the art of being visibly harmless, of seeming a bit on the dim side. It's her cover.

For the longest time, she'd gone without close friends. Being a walking chaos, inner demons ripping at her, and knowing that, no matter her front, she really was just not a really good person, she'd kept alone. Or in the periphery; she would make sure the friends that really knew her, were on the other side of the world. She would be keeping her friendships in "the real world" shallow and joking, always joking.

But somewhere along the line, she'd forgotten to keep her guard up this time. It had been too long since days like this, and she had, without quite meaning to, built upon the friendships in close proximity again. Even knowing, her messes always came at a larger prize to those around her, than to herself.

She was a tornado, when it got bad. Unmoving and quiet at the very centre, she would see all destruction as all around her was torn apart. But she, herself, at the eye of the storm, never got touched. It had been forever ago that she once had set the winds in motion willingly. She knew she could, and when her trust had been broken she had (but only ever once) done so. She was carrying the guilt. She knew she would keep it forever, and so she had promised herself to never let anyone in that far again.

She knew why this was, at the back of her mind. But she never let it make it's way to the surface. In a bad mood, people around her had bad luck. When furious, lives where shattered. Sure enough, the people she loved would see every issue around them solve themselves, slowly but surely, but as soon as they disappointed her, it would all rush back with a vengeance. It was better to cut herself off from others, she thought. Not to cause harm, -she could not help holding everyone to higher standards than one could really hope to meet. And she held herself to the highest.

- Father, come to me!

She had never called to him before, being raised under the false image of a good man that had died before she was born. A man that never existed, she knew, but still an image she'd held on to and nurtured, and tried to honour in words and actions.

- Father, I know you can hear me. I am ready to face you! Rise!

She threw her words into the air, watching the golden specks of dust in the sunlight dance in the very force of the air she exhaled with her words.