Chapter 138

Drunk me, is not a good thing and I remember in my hazy stupor why this is not something I ever do to myself. I am an emotional mess, sobbing into my own lap on the floor and cradling my umpteenth cocktail of hard liquor while pulling my mental state into disarray.

I am a bad drunk and I can’t switch off the depths of feeling going off inside me like a hot flowing volcano as lava bubbles out through my body. I was stupid to do this to myself, and instead of drowning my sorrows I have opened Pandora’s Box and can’t seem to switch off the all-consuming pain and turmoil coming from the dark recesses of my brain.

It’s like I have my own cinematic tragedy on replay, reminding me of my life and all my woes and stupid buried memories which are springing out in all directions, to add to how devastated I already feel.

Despite all of that, HE is still foremost in my brain, plaguing me like the tormentor he is so apt at being, and even in his absence he still has that hold over me.

Go figures that the demon would star in my self-inflicted daymares.

I fall back on the floor and spill my drink all over his white plush rug as I let out another wave of gut wrenching sobs until I can’t breathe anymore. My nose is runny and blocked, my eyes burning with the watery makeup that’s poured down my entire face and left little dark droplets on the rug around me. I don’t care though, screw his stupid ridiculously expensive rug in his stupid Manhattan apartment. Fuck Alexi and all that he is. I can’t remember feeling this way in a long, long time. Not since the day my mother held me down at the age of eleven and let Rick rape me for a ten pound bag of heroin.

The feeling of complete hopelessness and devastation as she stole what was left of my sanity that day, for a pitiful little bag of smack and showed me how little value I held in her life. After years of beating me into submission and verbally stripping me raw of any self-respect or self-esteem I may have naturally had, she made sure she took the last ounces of me away that day. I was her punching bag in life and the source of all her anger. I was the baby who ruined her life, her marriage and the reason she was a scummy piss poor addict in the worst part of Hackney.

A forgotten child that no one noticed, no one cared about, and I have never forgotten that is what, and who, I am. I spent years hiding the reality of my life from school and those who lived around me, but my story was not unique and many kids like me had abusive addict parents and lives that no children should endure. I had to learn to suck it up and deal with it. I had to learn to fend for myself and not rely on anyone else for anything in life. I fed myself, made sure I made my own money in any way I could just so I wouldn’t starve or freeze. I stole, I begged, I manipulated people just to get by and I learned that if you are streetwise and savvy and put all your frail feelings in a cold place to die, then you can survive almost anything you set your mind to.

Age is just a number and the smallest children can find strength in survival. That’s what I did. I learned that men and women can be equally cruel, that people will turn a blind eye to something distasteful rather than help, even when you are a child. I learned that those in positions to help are sometimes as bad as those who abuse. I learned you should never trust anyone, as all humans have their own motives and it is never about your welfare in the end.

I have seen it all. I watched kids being taken by social workers, buckled into cars and whisked away, only to end up in the children’s homes and running away at every opportunity they could. I didn’t have friends, because I couldn’t trust anyone not to tell what I was enduring and fear of becoming one of those kids being whisked off to a home to endure other kinds of wrong. I heard rumours, watched the fear of kids when the workers came round, and it was enough for me to never trust police, care workers or professionals who claimed to take us away from cruelty.

I learned to adapt by embracing the abuse and using it so I could rise above a lot of the street rats I knew around where I lived. I excelled because I was taller, slimmer, and prettier, than a lot of them, and I was smart enough to know it had a use. I started improving my dialect to appear older and more educated, from a better standard of living which gave me an advantage in making cash for myself.

I tried to keep myself clean and groomed, so the school wouldn’t be suspicious over my care, and so richer men would want to fuck me for faster profits.