Unanchored: Inspired by Demi Lovato (book 1 of the unanchored series)

1.⚓️

You know, I wasn't always an asshole. I was a good kid. I got good grades, follow the rules, and I even came home an hour before curfew. Compared to how I am now, I was an angel. My parents always bragged about me to their friends every chance they got. They were sure that I would get into the right college because, in their eyes, I was a smart child with a good reputation. They weren't worried about me getting into funny business because, as I said, I was their good girl, a poster child. I was perfect.

Now, you're probably wondering, if I was such a perfect child, what happened to me? What happened so severely that I fell off the wagon? Well, I'll tell you. Life got hard for me at the beginning of my junior year of high school, when I found out that my now ex-boyfriend shagged my best friend over the summer. And I didn't find out until the first day of school when they were kissing each other and holding hands in the hallway. Yeah, that was a big slap in the face. No, more like a "fuck you, Jade." I was hurt, I was angry, I was sad, and I was fucking torn apart. I knew something was up the moment he texted me, "I think we should go on a break, you know. It's summer."

So what if it was summer? You're my boyfriend, and I wanted to spend time with you, but you didn't want that because you were too busy fucking my best friend. My best friend? He could've picked any other girl, but, no, it had to be my best friend. Why would Michaela do this to me?

It didn't only hurt me that she was sleeping with my boyfriend, Charlie. She lied to me all this summer, about where she was going, who she was with, while she was still best friends with me and yet, she came to my house, sleeping over many times, especially when she was hammered and she didn't want her parents to find out. I took care of her. I took care of her perfidious ass. I, even, fucking, let her come with me on all of my family summer vacations because, at that time, I thought of her as a sister. She never said anything. She just lied straight to my face; they both did. They were liars, no good people, who didn't need to be in my life anymore. So, I just stopped talking to them, and whenever they would try to talk to me, I'd tell them to "go fuck themselves."

Do you know what it feels like when someone you dated for over a year, tells you that they want to call it quits and the first thought that comes to your mind is, "What did I do wrong?" I spent the whole summer, crying, fucking whoever came my way, boy or girl, I didn't care, I was broken. I was unanchored. I still am unanchored because I hate myself, my boyfriend fucked my best friend, and I was a fucking drug addict. Yep, that's right. I did drugs over the summer. No one knew, not even my parents, and Michaela was too busy with Charlie, that she hardly noticed that I was popping pills left and right. I don't know why I turned to drugs; I promised myself that I wouldn't turn into a junkie, and now I was a junkie.

Every minute, every second, I was doing lines of coke, heroin, and anything you name it. Sometimes, I mixed opioids with alcohol. Yep, I was riding the white pony until I almost died. My little sister found me on the floor, vomiting blood, and then I began foaming. I guess that was the breaking point for my small body and my parents. At that time, they knew that I was doing some sort of drug because my mom found my bag of LSD and Angel Dust. Man, my parents were pissed. So, when I OD'd, I had to get my stomach pumped, and after I was able to recover, I went to rehab. This all happened at the end of September and until November. I was gone from school for two or three and a half months. I had so much shit to makeup, but I made it up.

I know what you're all thinking, I did this all because of a boy. No, I didn't do this all because of Charlie cheated, I mainly did it because I was sick of feeling things and being hit with every little wave of emotion. I just wanted to be numb and happy at the same time because after I found out about Charlie and Michaela, I not only did drugs but, I was discovering little flaws about myself and my body. Like, how small my boobs were, how fat and ugly I was, and finally, how I was a waste of space. An irrelevant atom.

I kept asking God, why am I here? Why am I alive? Why did the people I love, stab me in the back? Was I not good enough for them? What the hell did I do wrong? I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I still can't figure out what's wrong with me, other than the fact that I am a depressed junkie. Something deep inside me was eating at me, and I didn't know what it was, even before I found out about Charlie and Michaela, and when I started doing drugs. I had felt like that for a long time when I was little. I always felt so out of place. I felt unanchored. I didn't feel like myself; I didn't even know what "being myself" was. All I knew was that I was a sad, broken, little girl.

In November, I went back to school, and I did pretty good, I was back to my old self, or at least everyone thought I was. Then I met Dennis, and he was everything I wasn't. Perfect. He seemed like he had his life together by the looks of his new suit and tie and his mini 1950s elephant trunk. He was the ideal guy. He treated me like a queen, even if we weren't dating, he treated me like I was worth something. He made me feel like I had a reason to live.

Sadly, on November 17th, I was raped by Dennis, a guy that I thought was my friend. After that night, I wasn't the same; I never told anyone, including my parents. What could I tell them? That I was raped by a grown-ass man, who I use to meet after school every day. They'd never let me out of the house again. They would never trust me again. They would send me away, and that's what they did, but they didn't send me away to a Christian healing place for victims of sexual assault and rape to get treated for my traumatization, and that's what they did.

They sent me away to rehabilitation for detoxing mentally and spiritually because I started to do drugs again.

I was going back to my old ways; I was being sucked into a vacuum of my bullshit life. And I slept like a baby, a baby resting in its mother's placenta.

A month later, I was in a coma. My dad only visited me. My mom didn't because my mom was disgusted by me, and she didn't want me to be around Grace, my baby sister. I was a bad influence on her, and I made her look like a terrible mother to me in front of her friends and our family.

She said that I was taking the family name and stepping on it like it was dirt. She said I was behaving like a deugniet, which translates to a naughty person in Dutch.

My family is from a province in the Netherlands named Friesland. Yeah, whoever came up with that name must've discovered the invention of fries before early local German villagers, who claimed they fried potatoes during the outbreak of the French Revolution, and fell in love with them. Anyway, My mom didn't want me around her friends or our family, she started treating me like I was The Bubonic Plague who was ruining her life and making everyone in my family sick with my deadly disease.

Once I relapsed, my parents sent me back to rehab, and this time, when I got out, they made me go to a support group and seek therapy. They wanted me to be their perfect little girl again and again, but I couldn't be perfect anymore. I couldn't be their ideal daughter. I was so sick of being perfect and pretending I had no flaws when I was just lying to them. I was lying to myself. I couldn't take the pressure anymore, so I decided to end my life.