Therapeutic Love.

Chapter 7 - Cigarettes and Vodka

Song: Can you feel my heart - Bring me the Horizon

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Thump thump, thump.

Thump thump, thump.

My bandage encased fists connected with the heavy punching bag, each punch matched the drum beats of the song blasting through my earphones. With each punch and puff of expelled breath the weighted bag swung back slightly, only to be met with another fist. My mind was blank, being solely focused on matching my quick swings with the rhythm of those drums. Nothing else existed in that moment, I'd built my walls of nothingness that was so strong, yet could be so easily fractured by just a brush of fingertips across my bare skin, or the slip of an ear bud.

Thump.

I'm scared to get close,

and I hate being alone.

I long for that feeling to not feel at all

The higher I get, the lower I sink,

I can't drown my demons they know how to swim.

Thump.

The beat picked up along with the rate of my jabs and by the climax of the song I was firing close range punches as fast as my sweating body could allow me. The weighted bag was tilted at an impossible angle, almost swinging off the hook that supported it. With one finial feral shriek and a burst of blind anger I swung my body around and extended my curled leg outward in a hard kick that granted the bag the force it needed to swing off the hook and onto the dirty laminated floor. That was my routine. Get up, go to therapy, cry, punch the bag. Nothing changed, nothing tampered with like last week. Typical Wednesday routine.

I broke my walls and stuffed my ear buds in my pocket, crossing over to the punching bag and kicked it towards the rest of them to be set up the next day, blowing a drop of sweat off the top of my nose. This place isn't all shitty, it has a gym with a punching bag and stuff, there's a large grass area thing round the back that's nice to sit at in the summer but anyway, I'm getting off track.

I returned to my room without being stopped or talked to, which is good because I probably would've tried to knock them out there and then. Everyone, even the teachers, know not to talk to me on Wednesdays. I had a cold shower as soon as I could. When I had finished I dried off and got changed into some comfier clothes, I debated going to bed even though it was only half seven but decided against it since I'd probably start thinking about the torturous therapy I'd endured that day.

Sighing, I paced around my room and tried my best to ward off the oncoming thoughts and feelings that attacked my head. I decided I'd have a fag on the roof and try and forget about it for a while.

I grabbed my lighter and a pack from my bag and climbed onto the roof. The cold wind ripped through my clothes and chilled my exposed skin, making me fumble on the flick until a spark caught onto the flammable fluids inside the plastic casing and caught alight. I lit the cigarette with some difficulty and inhaled the bitter smoke, when I blew out I could feel my worries and discomforts leaving my body with the smoke and being taken away by the biting wind temporarily. I sat down and watched the twinkling lights of the city stand out from the darkness in the distance. There wasn't much light pollution here, since the school was a five minute drive to the city, so the night was clear and bright. The cloudless sky glittered with the millions of constellations it held and the full moon shone a light on anything it could touch, cleansing everything around me in a blue tinge.

I tapped the ash off the end of the cigarette and watched the small embers get carried away by the wind before dying out and becoming invisible in the dark landscape surrounding it.