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5th May, 2010
House party, New York
Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering."
― Roland Barthes
Cassie lay on her back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, the room spinning around her. This was her life now. This was how most of her days ended, high from whatever she had taken, washed down with alcohol; sometimes at parties, sometimes in her own apartment or some hotel or arena. It didn't matter where she was, who she was with as long as there was something to block out the pain, the memories. The life she was living now, no one knew her past, where she came from.
However, the way she was living her life, it was also part of the reason two of the three promotions she worked for wouldn't let her work for them anymore. And like a bad circle of events, the more work she lost, the more she turned to drugs and alcohol. Sure, there wasn't drug testing in most of the small town promotions, but people always knew when someone was high and when they started missing shows or their performance was affected by the drugs, promoters started taking notice. It was one thing drinking and taking drug outside the ring, it was so rampant in the business that most looked past that. But when Cassie started doing coke before shows and was jittery, people didn't trust being in the ring with her. After botching a move while high and injuring herself and her opponent during show, she was the liability that no one trusted anymore. Most people understood she'd had a tough few months, but there was only so much they could ignore. And so the circle continued. Sure her move set, but especially her promos, in the squared circle had caught the attention of many promoters in the past. The risky, high flying moves she did, the matches she took part in brought in the crowds. She was making a name for herself in the Independent wrestling scene. But now it was all too much a risk. A risk to Cassie and to the people she stepped in the ring with.
"Cassie, baby," Cassie slowly turned her head at hearing the soft voice. She hadn't heard that voice in three years, but she would recognise it anywhere. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be.
A confused Cassie crawled to her feet, pushing the hair sticking to her sweaty face back, the room was spinning even more as she tried to find her bearings. Hearing the voice again, she stumbled forward trying to find the person it belonged to. "Mom?" she called out, walking out of one of the rooms of whoever's house she was in. At this point, she wasn't even sure. It was just someone Jake knew and he always knew the best people, with the best little pills.
"Mom? How are you here? You…you and dad died," Cassie said, tears forming in her eyes as she stared ahead at the vision in front of her. She wiped the tears away, further smudging her eye make-up. Stood rooted to the spot, she yearned for her mom to pull her into her arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. Then she blinked and the woman was gone.
Cassie continued to walk around the large house, she had to find her. She had to. "Mom," she kept calling out, stumbling as she walked around the place, a hand reaching out. If she could just find her mom again, she could grab her this time, keep hold of her and then everything would be ok. Her mom would make everything better, she always used to. After Alice and Sam died, Cassie had tried to make everything okay; to look after Alex, to make business decisions, but she couldn't get it right. She wasn't her parents. She couldn't take her sister's pain away and she didn't know what the right business decisions were.
A little while later, still unable to find her, Cassie fell down the wall she was leaning against for support. Wrapping her arms around herself as the tears flowed down her cheeks, her eye make-up a complete mess but she didn't care anymore. Hugging herself, Cassie felt a few tears rolling down her cheeks, burying her face in her knees which were against her chest.
Her life was a mess, a complete and utter mess. She was so high most days, she rarely knew what day it actually was. Let alone how she was getting through the odd match she still had at the one promotion that hadn't fired her yet. She was a good wrester, really good, but her addiction to drugs and alcohol was ruining that. Like it was everything else in her life. If she got help, she had the potential to be one of the great female wrestlers of her generation; she had a style like that of Molly Holly and Lita. She could be someone that people remembered years after she retired, talking about how she wasn't afraid to have intergender matches, to bleed, to backflip off ladders and get hit with metal chairs. She could leave her mark on the wrestling world if she beat her addictions. Or at least, that's what she was told by so many people.
You're gone and I gotta stay
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Spend my days locked in a haze
"Yo, Cassie? That you?" One of the guys at the party asked, stumbling over to where Cassie sat on the floor. "You feeling alright?" he asked, figuring maybe she was just having a bad trip from the LSD she had taken earlier.
Cassie looked up, her face tear and mascara streaked. She couldn't remember the name of the guy standing in front of her, all she remembered was sharing a bottle of Jack Daniels with him hours earlier. He was one of Jake's friends was all Cassie remembered. "I need-"
"What do you need babe?" he asked, interrupting her. Running his hand up and down her leg.
"I need something to help me forget everything. I want to forget everything," Cassie asked, desperation in her voice. "I want to feel free."
"I can help with that," he said reaching into his pocket and pulling out a little bag with pills in.
"There you are."
Cassie smiled up at her boyfriend, Jake, moving to straddle him when he sat down next to her, kissing him sloppily. Cassie had met Jake the year before at a party after a show. They had a very on off relationship, but Jake knew Cassie always came back to him, to the pills he could provide her. So Cassie dealt with his cheating ways, the way he was occasionally too rough with her because she could block it out, like she blocked everything else out with the drugs.
Jake's friend handed him a pill, Jake placed it on his tongue before Cassie kissed it from him; a coy look on her face.
"That wasn't yours."
"Whoops," Cassie shrugged, kissing down his throat. She didn't care if his friend was still there as she started to undo his button down shirt. Not that it mattered, a few seconds later and Jake stood up with Cassie still attached to him, carrying her to the nearest bedroom. It was easy for Jake to carry her, she'd lost so much weight from drug abuse she barely weighed 100lbs these days.
21st May, 2010
Vegas Motel, Minot, North Dakota
Northern Outlaw Wrestling
"What do you mean I'm not fighting tonight?" Cassie asked, angry and confused, not seeing her name on the sheet for that night's matches she had gone to Brian's office.
"You know why, Cassie. I've tried ignoring it, but I can't anymore. I can't keep putting you and the others at risk. Lexi doesn't want to get in the ring with you."
"Oh, and what Lexi wants goes because you're fucking her."
"Don't go there, Cassie. If I put you in a match, you're a risk to yourself and to others. You've already hurt one person in a match. People don't want to work with you, not until you clean yourself up."
"RISK? I'M NOT A RISK TO ANYONE. I'M THE BEST YOU'VE FUCKING GOT IN THIS SHITTY LITTLE PROMOTION! PEOPLE COME TO SEE ME, CHEER FOR ME! YOU REALLY THINK ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE BACKSTAGE POSING AS WRESTLERS WHEN THEY'VE BEEN AT THIS FOR SIX MONTHS AT MOST ARE REALLY GOING TO BRING PEOPLE TO YOUR SHITTY LITTLE SHOWS?!" Cassie screamed, not caring who heard what she had to say.
"You need help. One day you'll thank me for this. Get clean and then I'll put you back on the books."
"Forget it, I don't need you or this." Cassie turned, ready to leave. She stopped, two emotions coursing through her when she saw who was standing there: Hurt and anger. Anger was the only one she would ever show though.
"Now it makes sense," she laughed to herself. "YOU'RE the reason I'm not fighting tonight or any other night now, why none of the promotions are letting me wrestle anymore. Congratulations, you succeeded," she mock clapped. "My career is pretty much over. What do you want to ruin next?" She asked stalking over to the person she blamed for another promotion telling her she couldn't wrestle until she cleaned herself up, her tone vicious.
"You can't keep doing this, Cassie. Let me help you," Brandon pleaded.
"I don't need your help, I don't need anyone's help. I'm fine, I just need you to fuck off and LEAVE ME ALONE!" Cassie screamed the last part, pushing past her old friend, holding back the tears. She wouldn't cry, not in front of any of them. Not in front of anyone.
"Yes you do, Cassie. You can beat this, I know you can. There's a really good rehab clinic-"
"A rehab clinic?" Cassie spun around to face Brandon again, seething. "I don't need to go to rehab, when will people realise that? I just need people like you to leave me alone and let me live my life." She ran her fingers through her hair, gripping it.
"What life is that? Spending most of your days high and drunk. Risking your life and your opponents when you actually remember to show up. I know you've been through a lot, but this isn't the way. You need to live your life, Cassie, not waste it away. Stop hanging out with those people, you know who I mean; they're toxic. Stop pushing away the people that do care. Do rehab properly this time."
"Do you ever shut up? So high and mighty, Mr I've never done anything wrong. God I wonder how Ava put up with you, agreeing to marry you." Cassie felt like someone had a vice grip around her heart as she stood there talking about her best friend. Ava's death was another mistake she could add to the long list of mistakes that had her name on them.
Brandon knew that Cassie didn't mean what she was saying, she was just hurting. He was hurting too, but Cassie was his friend, she had been his dead fiancée's best friend. He had to help her, he wanted to help her. "Do you think Ava would want to see you this way? She tried so hard to help you, you know the one thing she wanted was for you to beat your demons."
"Look where that got Ava, six feet under in a coffin. But hey, at least she got away from you and your boring little life! No wonder she took those drugs!" Cassie spat angrily, unable to stop the hurtful, poisonous words coming from her mouth. "NOW STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM ME!" she screamed before running off, not able to stop the tears filling her eyes anymore. She needed to get away from there, she needed something to take the edge off.
Staring at herself in the bathroom mirror a few days later and Cassie hated what she saw. She was a mess; mentally and physically. She no longer looked healthy; she was too skinny now, her face so gaunt, her long hair hung lankly down her back, her make-up was smudged, there was no longer any light in her eyes. She looked sad, she was sad. So sad. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, but at this point she wasn't sure she wouldn't stop if she started. There was so much pain.
The more she stood there staring at her reflection, the more she hated what was looking back at her. Before she knew what she was doing, she had punched the mirror, breaking the glass. Holding her hand out in front of her she watched the blood trailing down her fingers, her knuckles split with small shards of glass in them. She didn't care about the pain, that wasn't the pain she wished would go away. There was a much bigger pain that had taken over her life the last three years, one she tried drowning out with drugs and alcohol. Anything she could get her hands on, anything to make her forget. A pain she tried blocking out with exhilarating moves in the ring. Her high flying style in the ring wasn't just because she was small, but because she was constantly chasing that feeling that, for a few seconds a time, took away the pain she felt, made her forget. Made her feel something else. But it wasn't enough, it was never enough. She never completely forget and the pain never went away, no matter how many grams of cocaine or heroin she snorted, how many little pills she swallowed, how much alcohol she drank. She couldn't completely block everything out.
Instead she was blocking everyone else out, pushing everyone away. Everyone that tried helping her, new and old friends, family. She kept telling everyone that she was fine and didn't need them or their help, but she did. She had built such a big wall around herself that she didn't know how to let anyone in, didn't know how to say she was struggling and needed help, how to tell her sister, her grandmother that she was sorry. Instead she turned to alcohol and drugs. She had spent the last three years running from everything and everyone that knew what had happened. She thought if she got far enough away from Malibu that she could be someone else, someone whose parents hadn't died when she was seventeen. But she knew and she couldn't block her own voice out.
After her parent's death, Cassie had barely coped. She had tried putting on a brave face for everyone around her, while everyone tried to come to terms with it. She tried to be strong and what she thought her parents would want her to be, what other people needed her to be. She tried keeping things normal for Alex, 'stick to normal routines' the websites on grieving told her. But what was normal about a fourteen year old losing both her parents? How could Cassie keep to a normal routine for Alex when nothing was normal anymore? Her parents weren't there to ask Alex how school was, or to say night to her. They weren't there for family diners or weekends. For the first month she spent every night holding Alex until she fell asleep and then calming her sister down and getting her back to sleep after the nightmares woke her up. In her own room she would lie there, drinking from a bottle of whatever she could find or take whatever pill that Marcus would give her until she fell asleep. When it came to the businesses, Cassie didn't have a clue what to do. Everything, the business', the money, all the properties had been left to her and Alex but she could barely get through the day without a drink, let alone know what the right decision was to make when it came to all the questions about the business. Victoria was in her seventies but she took control of the businesses again in the end. At least until Cassie and Alex were older, that had been the plan in the end decided by Victoria, the family lawyer and the board. No one could have known what would happen to Sam and Alice and so while it had always been intended for Cassie and Alex to take over one day, to inherit the family business' and fortune. No one expected it to happen this soon. Victoria also moved into the mansion to be there for her granddaughters, but they were all grieving and Cassie still took it upon herself to try and do everything. So busy being there for everyone else, she forgot about looking after herself.
But it was still too much for Cassie. She couldn't cope being in the house, being around everything, all the responsibility being placed on her, her own grief. Everything she thought she had to be. She couldn't help anyone, she felt like she was suffocating. So she left a month before she turned eighteen, left a note to Alex telling her she was sorry. But the miles, the drugs, the alcohol, pushing everyone away; none of it took the pain away.