Sleep

I've been here for years. I know her like the back of my hand, reading her to me is easier than breathing....and yet, I didn't see this coming.

I know her expressions; how she laughs when she really means it, the pitch of her screams when she's terrified, or the pace of her sobbing when she's crying from pain and nut just because.

Maybe I refused to see when those expressions became empty, meaningless...merely another motion to go through for the day. Her existance, as she saw it, was meaningless.

Now, don't think I didn't try to help. I did everything I could, every single thing someone in my position could. I love her. Yes, I still do, even when she refuses to believe it. She became my world, the one I had to help, a friend...and more.

It may have started when she finished school. Or when we moved. Maybe it took longer, it started with the pills. I should have noticed when she broke that promise and simply stopped caring about what happened to her. To us...

She's holding a white mug, filled it with milk and coffee. Her expression is vacant, her eyes empty. Her lips part slightly as she takes another sip of the drink. Slow acting poison, just another drug.

"Do you think he'd have come here if I'd asked? Left everything for me like I'd have done?"
I can't reply to that. I don't know what to say.
"Yes. Maybe."
She chuckles, shaking her head. The gesture is mechanical, she's practically an automathon right now. She's as good as gone. And all I want to do is hug her, take her in my arms and hold her against me, let her listen to my heartbeat, tell her I'm still here, and all because of her. All I wanted was to make her as strong as she's made me. I believe in her, even now.

She won't look at me. She stares at the wall, or the floor...anywhere but me. She knows what she's about to do, we both do. And it's killing us both, her more literally than me.

"Do you think I should have told her how I felt? Even if it was just...well, something that would just fade away?"
I try to cup her face, but my hand against her skin is like smoke, maybe a gentle wind. She can feel it, but it's not what she needs. she needs someone here...someone she can FEEL, someone she can see like she sees everyone else. She longs to be loved, for someone to feel for her what she feels for those she cares about. She can't see...and it kills me. I know there's many of us who love her, who'd do anything to see her smile, even if it was just for a second.

But I know I'll never see her smile again.

"You should have told her. And everyone else. They all should have known what you thought, what you felt..."

And I should have told you I loved you more often. Showed you in more ways. I shouldn't have made promises that didn't depend on me. I should have kept my word to you.

At least I know there's one promise I can still keep. And I will.

She won't look at me. One by one, she snaps the blisters containing the pills and sets them on a bunch over the table. She counts them two, three times, clicking her tongue. It's a fairly small dose, enough to put her to sleep for days. But that's not what she wants.

She wants to sleep forever, and I can't stop her.
She takes out the bottle of vodka and places it beside the pills, unscrewing the cap and taking a swig, craning her head back and opening her mouth, dropping the whole bunch of pills into her mouth and swallowing them. Her eyes close, and I can see tears rolling down her cheeks, the image obscured by the watery cloud forming on my own eyes.

She finally did it, and I can't decide if I'm proud of her strenght, or dissapointed about the fact that she just ended her own game. She'll never know if her feelings werw truly reciprocated, or if her dreams would come true. Her marks in this world will fade, present only in the memory of us who loved her.

She lies on the bed, squeezing my hand, her eyes finally snapping open and locking with mine.
"I always wanted to be like you, Red."

I can't talk. I'm choking on my tears, holdng her hand as tightly as I can. She chuckles and smiles, her breath becoming slower, more shallow with each passing second. I can barely feel her pulse. Still, her hand holds mine with a vicious strenght.

"Never let me go, Manda...guide me through this."

I just nod. Her eyes are closed again. I kiss the tip of my fingers and place them over her mouth.

Her skin is cold. She's not breathing anymore.

And still, she hasn't let go of my hand. And she never will.

At your side, on your left.

Always.

Someone, please...help me. Help us. Make sure this stays like this: just a piece of fiction writing.

Someone help me save her.

Nightmares- Part 1

Throughout my life, I've come to realize that I'm apparently not entitled to a good night's sleep, nor am I the kind of person who can have a pleasant, quitet, peaceful dream.
I'm afraid of the dark. ever since I was a little kid, I've never been able to stay calm where there's no light. I'm also not particularly fond of enclosed spaces, but that's another story.
When I was a kid, they made me sleep with the door closed and the lights off. Immediately after my father would close the door, I'd start imagining the creatures that lurked in the dark, under my bed,or inside my closet. I tried to stay awake so they wouldn't eat me. Every night, I cried in silence until I finally fell asleep.

When I was about 6, the beatings started. He'd come home, staggering and reeking of alcohol,calling out for my mother. At first, she'd tell me to go to my room, and I'd stay there, lights out and covers over my head, hoping the sound would fade away, or that he'd pass out and leave her alone. The first time he hit me, it was because he'd heard me cry. After that, it became an everyday thing; he'd go for my mother, and I'd run and hide while he did to her whatever he feltlike that day. Then, when he was done, he'd start this twisted game of hide and seek with me. If he couldn't find me easily, he'd grow angry and take it out on anything that crossed his path, my mother included, until he found me, and then he'd punish me for hiding from him. But it was preferable to what happened if he did find me.
Things only got worse from then, and every night, after he was "done" with me, I had to stay in that room, in that bed where he had hurt me. I felt him there, like my room was his prision for me. There was no running from that.There was no running from him. If I said "no", then he'd lock me up in the basement, or under the stairs, or the closet...and he'd leave me there for hours. There were rats in the basement, and spiders. But he gave a fuck. Nights went by, hour by hour...and suddenly, being asleep or awake made no difference, 'cause it was all the same. He was everywhere, with the rats and spiders and shadows in the dark, and the noises that came from the dingy,dust-covered corners of the house.
We tried telling. I tried running, but mom wouldn't let me. We needed him.
I ran away from home at 16, but I could never run away from my father. He was there every time I tried to sleep. Every man I lived with had his face, his smell, his touch... I knew he'd follow me everywhere.
I hadn't slept in two weeks the night I was arrested. Lights, sounds, and a tone of voice that was all-too familiar for me, a kind of violence I knew well.
18 months in jail. Posession. And it was dark there. I was back to the situation I had been running from for six years.

In jail, I started using heroin, and I discovered the joys of dreamless sleeping. It was a bliss,to actually get to rest during those moments of not thinking; everything around me was gone for a moment, and I got lost in the sensations, the adrenaline rush. I slept relatively fine when I used heroin, and that's something I must confess I miss.

I really don't know how to continue this. We've come to the point where I don't know how to put what needs to be said in words...or rather, I don't want to.

I've been to rehab twice. The first time was in 1995. I was fresh out of jail, and it was part of my sentence. That's where I, unknowingly, met some of the most important people in my life.
What happened at the clinic is something I won't talk about this time. I think it's enough if I say I still have nightmares about it even now. I dream that he sees Jill,and then spots me...that's when I wake up. I don't want to find out what happens next, 'cause I know.

I ran away from the clinic. I left the city, moved as far away from there as I could. I spent ten years hiding, selling myself for a hit so I could forget everything I had left behind in NY. I found someone more or less stable who treated me a little less like shit and more like a woman, and I moved in with him. We had...well, not a decent life, but it was not shitty, either. We got money, we both used, we could afford food, we went out...you know, things you're supposed to do and have when you're young. 20-something young.

But I got sick. Bored of the same thing, of the comfortable life.

I hopped on some stranger's car and let him drive me wherever he was going. I had drugs, some cash, and my body to pay for the trip.

Guess my surprise when, after three days of road trip, I woke up to find myself at the hospital, on the same city I had ran away from ten years ago.

That was my second rehab. That's how he found me.

This is it for now. I'll continue tomorrow.