BCPRESS

The low rumbling of the morning subway broke into my unconsciousness. My blurry sight could only make out the dim light hanging on the ceiling, dully staring back at me

Confusion was quelled by the aching of my body and mind. I sat up, swinging my legs off the chair to feel the ground. Then they slumped back to lean on the side of the vending machine. Exhaustion was the name for my state. My feet brushed on a puddle of unknown glutinous liquid on the floor. Ah. I must have taken a couple more bottles than I should have yesterday. It must have been a crazy night then. I tried to smile, though my mind remained blank, my hunch telling me it was fun, but I felt at a loss to feel the amusement.

I leaned over to pick up my jacket buried under the piles of empty green bottles. The jacket reeked of the familiar smell of liquor, and a faint odor of stomach acid mixed with yesterday’s dinner. The jacket’s big, reaching to my lower thighs, but it’s what provides me comfort and protection in my crazy, naked and exposed life.

Somebody had brought me here last night. Not my ideal space for a one-night stand. Not that I could remember who it was, I couldn’t remember anything last night. I couldn’t have cared to try and remember anyways. Probably just another wild night of reckless indulgence in bountiful cigarettes and cocaine, showers of tequila shots, vibrant blinding disco lights and endless nights of euphoria. Just like every night. The hazy memories seemed like fragments of a distant dream that refused to shape in my consciousness.

The red font of the nineteen missed calls from my mother was no longer a warning sign to me. I’ve developed an immunity for empathy towards her growing concern. I closed and pocketed my phone. I couldn’t face her anymore.

I looked up at the ceiling, breathing smoke into the air with a lit cigarette between two fingers. The station in the morning is silent. Very silent. It’s been a while since I have sat in this silence now.

Now every night is a party night. One day it just happened, and on did it continue. My musty memory of a faint beginning told me a different version of myself before the parties crashed in. The bottles and glasses and dance and music poured into my soul, filling it with hallucinations of happiness, hallucinations that my hollowness refused to turn real. A performance of amusement and fun, of which I’m the performer. I don’t know why I so desperately wanted to fit in, I don’t recall how hard I tried, I don’t know how many nights I’ve spent in this hypocritical ecstasy, but one day it just happened. And on did it continue. So every night became a party night, crashing in nobody’s house. So, I kept on playing that song that I pretend to love, kept on kissing that guy that’s not my type, kept on smoking it up until I couldn’t talk, kept on raising my glasses like I don’t care. So, I took drugs that I shouldn’t, hyped all night which I couldn’t, said things that I wouldn’t.

But I feel better now.

My identity was like a clutch of sand, slowly trickling through my fingertips, until I opened my palm and there’s nothing left but a few lonely grains. The question of who I am is knocking more and more loudly on my door of thoughts. My state of mind is like an old closet. I rummage through the closet trying to find something I remember throwing in there. Something called reason. Yet I couldn’t find it. The questions knock harder on my door, until something slips under the door, and a word hits me. Why? Why do I keep doing this? Numbness washing over me, I slump back on the chair, a halfway burnt cigarette slowly dying out in my fingers. I’m the daughter of a famous doctor. I’m a student, with a blindly bright future. But I’m a drug addict. I’m an alcoholic freak. I’m a hypocrite slut.

But you can’t be all those at the same time.

Nobody can.

So who am I?

Heroes save the broken world in a fantasy story. They take patience in the journey, eventually reaching the ending and succeed. My story is not a fantasy. My story is, rather, a Shakespearean tragedy, with endless holes of problems waiting to be solved. Heroes take patience in their journey, taking one step at a time. But I couldn’t even take just one. My problems lay in the back of my head, like a dusty attic one always says would clean up later. I simply just don’t know how to clean it up.

The ringing of a new text message requested loudly for my attention. It was my friend, sending a new location for tonight’s party. Thoughts interrupted, my problems were pushed back into the attic, waiting to be cleaned another day that I doubt would come.