Blanks and broken hearts

We Go Where We Want To

It was a Saturday. Probably about six o'clock. I came to with a start. Not the regular kind, though. The kind that reverberates through you and echoes down your spine. The kind that reeks of 'oh god, why am I still alive?'

I didn't want to crawl out of bed. To face my reflection.

But I did.

I jammed on the loosest clothes I could find and was out of the house with a slam of the door and a puff of icy morning breath. I knew where I wanted to be. The others wouldn't care if I didn't show up.

The sky was too blue. The sun too bright. I sighed and tugged my hood further over my head. The streets were busy with early morning traffic. I took the side roads. Finally, I crested the hill and slumped down on the ground. I tugged off my shoes and pulled my legs up to my chest. My head dropped of its own accord. For whatever reason, I had started crying. My breaths were shallow and uneven.

Come on. Fucking come on. Deep breaths. 1...2...3...4... Bullshit

My brain was waging a war; I could feel myself coming undone. The tears were faster now, hot and heavy trails down my face. My hand had slipped into my hair. I was panting with anger and exhaustion and 'why the hell am I still here?'. The façade I wore had smashed completely.
No more cool and collected Ness, best friends with Cassandra Williams, snarky and intelligent and good at everything.

Now was the time of Vanessa Burns, who was broken and angry and scared. The girl who hid round corners and in any available space just so she didn't have to talk. The girl who was too terrified to tell her parents the most key part of her identity, or to stop going to church because she had been brought up with Christianity and sins drilled into her brain, and no matter how hard she tried, they were still lodged there, telling her that she was wrong, all wrong, an abomination of all that is right, something that should've never existed in the first place. The girl who had surely been born to the wrong parents, or who had been corrupted by the devil and his wheedling ways. The girl who didn't think she should exist, because she was a scorch mark on the family tree. The girl who had been told she shouldn't exist because a book written so many years ago said so. And logic no longer functioned in this girl, she ran on autopilot, just along for the ride to wherever her sins were taking her, no matter what happened along the journey. This girl who had been unconsciously edging towards a knife or a box of pills or, as was the case today, a cliff. And maybe this girl would've ceased to exist on that icy Saturday morning. And yet...

"Ness? Holy hell, Ness!" There was a thud-thud-thud of Doc Martens and a rustle of wind. I stared upwards in shock at the fuzzy shape that had appeared and tried to blink it into recognition. They had sunk to their knees beside me and were shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline. "Do you want to talk about it? Or write it down?" Numbly, I nodded my head and mouthed 'later' through the haze of tears. Then there was a sudden weight around my shoulders and hot breath by my ear and a trickle of a tear running down my neck. "Please, please, please don't make me go through that again, Ness."

My head slumped again and I puffed out the words. "But I'm not worth it. The world would carry on spinning if I was gone."

"You are worth so much more than what you get, and you're so so strong and beautiful and don't you dare give me that bullshit, because my entire world would tilt off its axis and fall out of orbit if you weren't here. Please Ness, you have so much more to live for."

"If you say so."

I don't even know, so shut up, unless you actually read this, in which case, please love me and my inconsistent upload schedule. Peace, I guess - Cranberry