Nixon

Prologue

Nixon is the 3rd book in The Broken Series

Trigger/Content Warning: this book contains mature content, talks of suicide, mental and physical abuse, selfharm, drug use, and addiction

Nixon
• • •

Grief.

Addiction.

Emotions.

Three simple words and yet, I struggle with each one.

I'm fully aware of the fact that I have almost no control over them, I haven't in a long time.

I can't handle the body paralyzing grief my little sister's death boxed me into, I gave up on trying to fight my addiction to both drugs and alcohol, and I don't have the slightest clue of how to control my emotions. Fuck, most days I can't even process them, what they mean, why I'm feeling the way I am. Everything just ends up being channeled into anger.

I don't face things head on, I fucking drown them until I don't recognize the problem anymore. My head is screwed up and I don't think even therapy can fix the shit hiding in the depths of my brain. My thoughts tend to be dark, sinister, leading me to be a toxic person and infect the ones around me. I feel like I spread my darkness to anyone who comes close enough, as if it's a virus.

I was thirteen the first time I took a hit from a blunt at a high school party, the same age when I had my first sip of alcohol, fifteen when I experimented with ecstasy at a music festival I snuck into, sixteen when I took a bump of cocaine just to give it a try, and eighteen when I snorted Hydrocodone because I just wanted to stop feeling everything.

Hydro's were the introduction that had me diving head first into the river of opiates and I never wanted to resurface.

Right before my freshman year of college I dipped my toes into the sea of Benzos. I found a bottle of Xanax in my parents bathroom, prescribed to my Mom for her anxiety.  I couldn't get in touch with my dealer so I tried them, needing to just stop feeling things for a few hours. I crushed the pills up and snorted the white line and though the high was different from opiates, they got the job done effectively.

Drugs quickly became my vice, my lifeline, keeping me anchored in this fucked up world. They shut everything off, slowed everything down. For a little while I couldn't feel the suffering, the torment my sisters suicide bathed me in on a daily basis. I was free.

At first I wasn't too bad about it, I'd learned to limit myself to use only in my darkest moments or when I needed help falling asleep, but then Ryan Knightley showed up in my dorm room claiming to be my roommate. The sister to the guy who broke Knox's heart, the guy who turned my little sister's world on its axis.

After Ryan was forcefully placed in the center of my life I no longer had a grasp on anything I did. I lost every bit of control I had left and I hadn't even realized how far gone I had let myself get until I was convulsing on my cot in jail as my body seized. Coming off a drug my body craved that I had no way to obtain. The withdrawal was nothing compared to the grief still heavy in my heart, right below the spot her name is permanently inked into my skin.

How do you move on from your little sister killing herself and blaming you? How the fuck do you move forward after that? Live life as if it had never happened?

I sure as hell didn't know but I hoped that I would find clarity soon, if not I may relapse and overdose and that's the last thing I want. But sometimes I think maybe dying isn't such a bad way to end it after all.

Ultimately numb for eternity, now that sounds like heaven to me.