ᴀᴘʜʀᴏᴅɪᴛᴇ // $ᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇʙᴏʏ$

Chapter Twenty Four

APHRODITE

For some people, death wasn't a horrendous occurrence. For the people who knew life to be what it was, termination could be as simple an act as going home. Life was the true adversary. For the ghosts who drifted without a purpose, for the lost who would never find a home, for the broken who would never know how it felt to be fixed. Life was a ruthless opponent, one who never wasted time blocking, an enemy who came at you with fists raised and sharp teeth showing.

Life seemed to be full of pain and chaos and occasional fear. For some, the few happy moments in between never stood a chance.

I twirled a piece of my blonde hair and wondered when exactly I had become this cynical and thought about God.

It was hard to know if I was loved by a higher power when those who were supposed to be closest to me refused to feel it. It was difficult to understand that there was a God out there who would never forsake you when you felt totally forgotten. It was a struggle to tell yourself that God would never leave you when you felt utterly alone.

Maybe knowing those things about God, somewhere deep inside me, was what kept me going all those years. Maybe understanding that there was a much better place waiting for the righteous had been what allowed me to see death in a different light.

I didn't know. I didn't seem to know much of anything anymore.

I walked about the bedroom, the one Scott dumped me in a couple of days ago, the one where I shared a bed with him, and stared at my feet as I shuffled.

The effects of my nervous breakdown had taken a few hours to leave me. After Scott left me that night, after he patched me up because he refused to allow me to bleed to death on him, I cried myself to sleep. The feeling of crying, of giving in to everything going on inside me, was such a foreign feeling, but one that was building up for years. Over four years of never really coming to terms with what had happened to me during my upbringing with my family. But now, the nervous breakdown had finally ended. With it came miserable realizations. After it came the nothingness.

I thought I would crawl back into bed and sleep. I could clutch my Xanax bottle in my hand and close my eyes, letting the dark become my blanket.

In the past couple of days, my dreams had consisted of nothing. Eating had become a chore. Doing something with my hair took too much energy and would just be put up and off my neck. Conversations with Scott had become nonexistent. But what made my indifference become as real as my own skin was when my red lipstick remained untouched.

I knew I was losing myself when I looked at my reflection and saw my bare lips.

I could only muster up enough strength to dress myself, eat a few bites of food each meal, and redressed the cut on my thigh every day, everything done indifferently and everything done without spirit. I felt empty in a way I'd never felt empty before. As if everything I had ever been was flushed away. Without bones, my body would have no weight. Without skin, I would have ceased to have form. The wind would come and blow me away like a pile of dust, and maybe it would have been better that way.

Once my nervous breakdown had ended, I got over the image of Scott taking my mother's place in my life. Scott himself had nothing to do with that. I knew it was my own thing to deal with and get over. Scott was just another name on the list of people who kept me around for certain things that I didn't want them to need me for. But, as I curled up on my bed, feeling the lovely throb on my upper thigh, I fully accepted Scott's role in my life. I had to because there was nothing I could do to change it.

My feelings for Aristos were a different story. I knew he was the reason for my depression now. I wanted him back, but I was afraid that was impossible. I loved him. I wanted him to touch me.