Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm not using this for money. Yatsa, yatsa, and yatsa.
Author's Note: Breaking the Habit is a song by Linkin' Park. It's theirs and I'm only borrowing it.
-*-*-
Breaking the Habit
-*-*-
Memories consume
Like opening the wound
I'm picking me apart again
You all assume
I'm safe here in my room
Sitting back against the bedroom door, blonde hair matted and feet sweating cold. Thin light, twilight, sparkles on the mirror, gives an eerie feel to the corners. To the petite southern girl.
The nightmares still run thick through her fevered mind.
Not really nightmares.
Memories of a terrorized youth; dark nights in the humid bayou. Tall bottles of amber liquid, law documents on the low coffee table. Younger brothers' crying.
[Unless I try to start again]
There are strands of hair, white, against the black carpet. Her hand rests in her locks, and pulls another from the back of her head.
Speed asked her today why she always wears so much make-up, why she barely ever puts her hair up.
She'd lied. Told him the light in her bathroom must be off and it was easier to just leave her hair down. It was best if he didn't know the truth.
Best if he doesn't know that she barely sleeps, and when she does, it's tortured and not replenishing. Best that he doesn't know her lank hair is thinning by choice, not by a random genetic.
She takes her hand away and slams her head against the plywood, maple-stained door with a gut-wrenching thud.
I don't want to be the one
The battles always choose
'Cause I realize
That I'm the one confused
She remembers her parents' fighting. Her first word and they argue over what it was; she asks for a rifle for her tenth birthday and they argue; Her prom date and they argue. Her choice to leave Darnell, they scream – until her little brother walked in and got hit by a bottle. That solidified her decision to leave.
There's a green bottle on her nightstand and it reeks of tequila. A half empty vodka dribbles onto her sky-blue sheets. Ruined silk.
Like her.
Anger floods her and she knocks her head against the wood once more.
She can only recall her father, teaching her to use a list of guns as the "good times".
The rest of her brain's capacity is full of yelling, crying, cursing, beatings. Collections of cells to let her see a perfect picture of herself, bottle feeding her youngest brother while trying to brush her teeth. Her features tear-streaked in the mirror.
Mind games, R.J. Duquesne played still resonate through her. Still affect her life like nothing else.
I don't know what's worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
I don't know why I instigate
And say what I don't mean
I don't know how I got this way
I know it's not alright
So I'm
Breaking the habit
Tonight
Quietly she stands and her profile echoes in the standing, oval mirror. She learned by the age of nine to wear multiple layers to hide her thin figure. Sure, she'd gained weight after she stopped living under her parents' roof. But she was still so skinny it worried her closest friends.
She remembers days, not long ago, when she felt normal. Felt human. And she can't figure out how exactly she ended up hiding her heart like this.
Truthfully, her personality's darker, more serious and she trusts only those she loves. Horatio knows it. He knows everything and she fights with him almost constantly some days, just to keep her distance from a man who's been more of a father than her own.
Her mind aches.
She makes a single, delirious decision.
Clutching my cure
I tightly lock the door
I try to catch my breath again
I hurt much more
Than anytime before
I had no option left again
I'll paint on the walls
'Cause I'm the one at fault
I'll never fight again
And this is how it ends
She rises from the floor, unsteady on unclothed feet and a headache no aspirin could cure pounding against her skull.
Entering her bathroom, she absently locks the door. Somehow, she'd acquired the tequila from it's place.
No one had ever taught her about drug and alcohol interactions – she learned about them firsthand, watched doctors race to save her daddy's life when he would chase heart meds with whiskey. Race against the clock to un-poison his body.
She keeps bottle of sleeping pills, aspirin, midol lined up in size order behind the sink's faucet. Asthma inhalers, four years old on the small glass shelf. And right next to them, is an inconspicuous clear tan-brown container with the heart medication that keeps her dear father from dying. She always kept them handy for the times when his binges brought him home to his 'Lambchop'.
She begins to down the bottle, shakes the pills now cozy in her fist. The blonde wonders if slitting her wrists would be quicker, more efficient. In the bathtub with the shower on, the drain open, and there'd be nothing for people to clean up.
Only when the bottle cracks on the sick does she awake from her trance of crimson thoughts. The neck is jaggedly ripped from its body, and her hand bleeds from a dozen papercut cuts. She sees the liquid, rubs it between her fingertips.
Runs them over the reflective glass above her sink.
Cry.
The word is formed in streaks uneven. Bloody dripping streaks.
Her eyes regain their genuine sparkle. Crystal as she lifts a single piece of the clear substance from the gray basin.
The thin skin of her upturned wrist is milk-white and innocent. Pure.
Untainted. Like her soul so long ago.
I don't know what's worth fighting for
Or why I have to scream
But now I have some clarity
To show you what I mean
I don't know how I got this way
I'll never be alright
So I'm
Breaking the habit
Breaking the habit
Tonight
-*-*-
*v* Cassie Jamie *v*
csimiami@cassie-jamie.com