Broken Pieces

Chapter ten

After rolling around restlessly on the bed for ten minutes, I finally stood up. The photoshoot was at eight am and I had woken up since 2am, unable to go back to sleep.

I hated whenever this happened to me — there was no reason for me to suddenly wake up at this early hour and not feel like sleeping anymore. Without nightmares and nothing on my mind, I should have been able to sleep soundly but my insomnia worked like that at times.

There would be nothing wrong with me but it would come.

I almost used the drugs, but the therapist always said to use them only when necessary. And that was when triggered or when I was feeling troubled, not when I just didn't feel like sleeping.

And I followed that rule if not the dosage.

My usual routine was either watching tv or designing. I couldn't do either for obvious reasons and I didn't feel like it either.

I went downstairs to the kitchen to see if there was something to eat, trying to be as quiet as possible as I climbed down the stairs. I started eating something I found in the refrigerator but still didn't feel the sleep coming anytime soon.

Feeling frustrated, I started thinking of how my life worked. Whenever I thought I was past the stage of self pity and depressing thoughts, they always came back. I thought the new growing friendship with Katherine and my other new friendships were helping but I guess I was wrong.

My feelings were always weird and random at this point. My thoughts were constantly of the past in a different way — either adding happy endings or making them worse. I think of how life would have been if we had never had that accident or my mom had survived it. I think of what if my dad had died and my mom lived or if I had died or worse what if I was never born.

I quickly shook myself as my thoughts began to go to places I didn't like but was a place I'd gone a billion times. I'd confided in my therapist about this and she had said it was my mind trying to help me cope. She said it was something I had to deal with by myself by trying to shut down the thoughts when they came while thinking happy thoughts to replace them.

I finished eating and thought I heard footsteps thereby freezing but after checking and seeing no one, I relaxed. I decided to leave before someone woke up and saw me. I was about to climb the stairs before remembering the tour and Dorothy showing me a library somewhere.

The library was on the side of the mansion with Caden's room. I climbed the stairs carefully, not wanting to wake anyone, especially Caden. As I climbed, I admired the stairs again, it was long and curved in a beautiful way. The stairs in the mansion were two opposite stairs that were separate but joined at the top, leading to different sides of the mansion.

My eyes widened at the sight of the library. I hadn't seen the interior during the tour, so I decided to look around first. There was a desk with two chairs on opposite sides.

The library was of large expanse, with a lot of books which upon close inspection showed were arranged according to genre. I impulsively picked a comedy because I was surprised Caden had that in his library and the cover looked good.

I sat on the chair behind the desk and was glad to see that it was a recliner. I began reading the book while resting my back. It was an amazing book but I couldn't finish it because I suddenly started dozing off. When I noticed that, I quickly went back to my room to sleep before it cleared.

••€•••

I woke up at 7:30am and had to rush to avoid being late and I loved that, than not sleeping at all and looking bad at the photoshoot.