Always

forty-seven

L U N A
"It's 3am and the moonlight's testing me.
If I can make it till dawn then it won't be hard to see that I ain't happy."

I felt nothing.

I had figured that talking to my father would give me peace and I'd be able to move on. At least, that's what everyone had been telling me. But after yesterday, nothing changed.

I still felt nothing. Even when Jane pulled me in for a hug when I got home last night. I should have felt comfort or love or anything, but I was so fucked up that I felt nothing at all. My heart felt empty and my head was clouded.

But when I saw the worry in her eyes as she studied my puffy face, there was one thought which constantly nagged me. She deserved someone better. She didn't deserve a screwed up child who constantly holds her back and constantly stresses her out. She deserved so much better than all this pain I had been causing her for the past month.

I had gone straight to my room and yanked open the drawer to find the small plastic bottle and swallowed two blue pills without even thinking twice.

And now, the morning after, I laid in bed with the duvet covering my body up till my shoulders. I stared at the ceiling silently, the silence of the room being filled with the soft hum of the familiar song playing on the radio. With the help of the little light coming in from the window, I could make out the swirls of paint on the ceiling but once I got bored of that, I sighed and closed my eyes again. Not because I was hoping to fall asleep. I knew I couldn't fall asleep unless I grabbed another few pills. But instead simply because my eyes hurt too much and it felt so hard to even keep them open.

But when the song on the radio changed, my eyes flew open. It was the same song which Kyler and I had danced to on homecoming night after we had ditched the gymnasium for the park nearby.

I wanted to smile at the memory. I wanted to close my eyes and let the ache in my chest swallow me as I wished to go back to this night where Kyler held me so close to him that I could easily make out every feature of his face. But I couldn't. I couldn't smile. I couldn't feel the pain. It didn't hurt. It didn't make me feel happy either.

I felt nothing.

Sighing, I turned to my side and my eyes fell on the brown stuffed bear resting on the bed beside me. I remembered when I first got her when I was sick. And I also remembered how she always helped calm me down from nightmares every morning. I reached out and took her in my hands before lifting her up in front of me as I rolled onto my back again.

As I stared at Poppy silently, my eyes flickered to my hand where a small ring rested on my ring finger. Sitting up, I placed the bear beside me and pulled off the ring from my finger and held it between my index finger and thumb.

This was the ring mom used to wear every single day. She used to tell me dad gave it to her when they started dating. And every time I saw it, I fell in love with it. I'd always ask to wear it but wouldn't last five minutes with it as I'd freak out about possibly losing it. When I was fifteen she gave it to me, saying that I was old enough to take care of it.

She left the next day.

I dropped that ring in my palm and clutched it tightly before climbing out of bed and walking over to the bookshelf above my study desk. Placing the ring on the desk, I let my eyes scan the books, slowly picking out a bunch of them and balancing them on one arm as the other continued to pull out more.