The sound of the water cascading from the shower head masked the sobs that escaped her lips as she sat in the tub, energy less to the point of lacking the energy to take a shower. She simply just couldn’t do it any more. To her, life had no meaning and wasn’t worth the living. She forced herself to shower and she tried to get ready to go out. She put her make-up on half- heartedly, her mind preoccupied with suicidal thoughts. All of a sudden she grabbed a razor from the dressing table and ran into the bathroom of the rented apartment. She ran the tap in the hand wash basin and looked at herself in the mirror mounted above the sink, razor poised above her wrist. She tried to will herself to slit her wrists, but she couldn’t. “You’re so pathetic. You can’t even kill yourself? What a loser” she heard a voice say in her head. She ran out of the bathroom and collapsed on the bed, throwing the razor beside the bed.
She lay face up on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, crying. “Why?” she kept on asking herself out loud, her face showing the emotion going through her mind. The tears kept on streaming down her chocolate brown cheeks, now stained purple by the heavy mascara she usually wore, making two light purple wet patches on the white bedspread. She turned over and tried to sit up but gave up in the process. She felt like someone or something had drained her of all her strength or an invisible force had tied her down on the bed. She looked up at the ceiling, thinking, asking herself why she had let it all slip out of control, why she had never listened to her friend, why she had never listened to her mother, why she had never listened to that little voice inside.
It had all began many days before, when she was in high school, form two to be exact. She had begun hanging out with the wrong crowd, the ‘bad seed’ as her teachers called them. She didn’t care about what they had to say neither did she care what anyone else had to say. That was the first she had felt as if someone cared for her, something she missed in her family. Between the constant argument that communication with her mom was and constant bickering form her siblings, she felt out of place and unappreciated. But that clique had accepted her and she felt that they were her family. That was one of the reasons she joined that clique. The other reason was Tim. He was a class ahead of her, and most of her girls idol worshiped him. He was like a dream to them. They had heard stories of how romantic he was and they all wanted him to ask each one of them out.
She had run into him one day at the cafeteria and he noticed her. He walked up to where she was seated and called her aside. He had intense brown eyes that always made her melt when she gazed deeply into them. When he held her hand and asked her out, she felt her heart skip a beat and, at the risk of embarrassment, she jumped at the chance to go out with him even one with such enthusiasm, she almost spooked Tim.
On that first date, they went for a movie at the local theater and afterwards, he surprised her with a romantic dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants in town. When she told the story to her girls the next day they fell over each other in envy and proclaimed Tim to be a keeper. She felt the same and the proclamation only served as a confirmation of what she already knew. The next weekend, Tim invited her to join him at a party his friends were hosting at a very exclusive address owned by one of them. When she was introduced to them, she was mildly surprised when they all said they worked somewhere or the other, which meant they were mostly mature. But soon she saw a few people she knew from her high school and that dispelled all doubts from her mind. She relaxed and enjoyed the party. Soon after that she began hanging out with Tim’s friends at the expense of her girls, whom she abandoned.
The clique soon began influencing her, how she dressed, who she talked to and how she talked to people, who she walked with and hung out with if she wasn’t with Tim and soon she was introduced into the clubbing scene around town and she could became a regular at most of the clubs, club hopping in Tim’s car, never once asking herself how a form three student could afford to take her out every weekend and fuel a car. Then one day, he asked her to run a consignment of heroin for him. She thought that doing that would show her dedication and love. At the time she was in form four and Tim had finished from the school. He handed her directions to the place she was to drop the consignment and pressed a wad of notes in to her right hand, kissed her forehead and sent her off.
She delivered the drugs a few minutes later without incident and that night when she counted the money she realized that the wad of notes was more money than she had ever had in her life. She was able to buy a whole new wardrobe of new clothes. This aroused a curiosity in her mother. She had never once given her daughter enough money to buy a pair of shoes unless it was necessary therefore seeing her daughter in a new outfit everyday was really strange. They almost fought that evening and her mother stormed out of her room having found no answers to her many questions. That incident made her start drug running in earnest. The freedom of having an almost constant supply of cash to use to her heart’s whims was intoxicating and the more of it she could have the more she wanted.
From that point it was all downhill, she began using the drugs she was running and she fell out with the clique and broke up with Tim so she had to look for a new supplier and she got involved in worse evils like prostitution to support her habit. This had led her to where she was, lying on a bed in her rented apartment, her mind in turmoil, her body sickly, ravaged by the many STIs she contracted from unsafe sex.
She felt as if the world didn’t want her, she felt like killing herself, she needed to talk to someone. She needed to let it all out, but who could she approach, the world shunned her as an outcast, unwanted by society, a failure to her family…
