lies. all lies.

Her mouth is dry, so she takes another gurgling drink from an almost empty 2L of stale Coke and looks in the mirror. Week old make-up is streaked across a paling face, and dark circles surround eyes no longer bright and blue… but hollow, and as black as the hair that falls in greasy ribbons around her, sweat soaked and matted to the back of her neck and chest. Her white t-shirt was always too big, but now swallows her whole, layered with a dirty grey zip-up that hangs off one shoulder. Skeletal wrists are concealed in the sleeves, sliced up and down in short, deep gashes… the way that bleeds more. Flecks of white dust can still be traced along her cracked lips… as she slumps suddenly to the bathroom floor.

Hmmmm… must be almost time now…

She smiles at the empty bottle of prescription sedatives, as it falls out of her open hand and rolls across the thick white tiles to rest near a crumpled pile of paper. The truth was there, in those pages, and she found it. The truth… that she was a liar.

One who would do anything to feel numb again.

Anything…

untitled...

I used to glance in the mirror every so often… and feel no desire to lie about who I saw reflected back… but other times, I would look in the mirror and not see anyone at all, just masks. Thrown on in layers so thick I’d forgotten there used to be someone underneath.

In my offline absence, those masks were recognized… and eventually exposed to the people I love the most. No… it was more than exposed. They were ripped off, and shoved back in front of my face so I could admit they were lies. I refused to… and in doing so, effectively destroyed whatever semblance of self, or trust that remained. I caged myself into a corner where there was literally no-one left to give a shit. From whore to psychopath and right back again. Me… as “the messed up girl who is fucked of mind, and who occasionally writes about the person she wishes she could be.”

Out of the wreckage, I’m still letting myself believe a few pieces were salvaged. And maybe that’s all another part of the delusion, waiting to be shattered again one day, but for now, I’ll keep looking in the mirror and know that… I’ll never be as beautiful, or intelligent or creative as I pretended to be with the masks on… but maybe whatever’s left without them… is enough.