The Bitter Pill

Lying in bed, she contemplated how she had survived to reach the age of sixteen.
She felt so fucking old
The room was dark; the only sound was passing traffic on the busy Kings Road, whose ghostly lights illuminated in moving shapes across the walls of the room.
She’d been lucky to find someone to put her up for the night.
She could hear her own breathing, cruelly reminding her she was alive, and asked herself why was she still breathing at all?
Travelling across memory she tried to recall a time she felt loved, valued and wanted.
Apart from the clumsy, fumbling gropes of hormonal teenage boys professing their undying love to get into her knickers, so to selfishly alleviate the pain in their groin, during lost hours experimenting with alcohol in the local park, she struggled to find one other, which had not used her at some time in her life.
There had been, she supposed, that strange man she had met on Tottenham Court Road a few days ago. He had approached her during her lunch break one hot afternoon. Expensively dressed, extremely well spoken, he had asked her if he could share her table. Chewing on a plastic tuna sandwich, she regarded him under her eyes carefully. Looking around she noticed plenty of spare tables, but she wasn’t going to make a big fuss about it. She never fussed.
He proceeded to draw her into dialogue of London life, what she did, how bright she was, how incredibly attractive she was.Striking bone structure, he said. Did she know she could be an actress with a face like that? Would she be interested? He ran a Theatre company that was always looking for bright girls.
Despite the fact she was a virgin, she wasn’t completely naïve. But he had treated her like a proper grown up, seemingly valuing her opinions, talking to her, not at her. But deep down she knew it was his want, not hers, which he was thinking of.
That’s what it always came down to. Want.
The wants of everyone else.
“What about what I want?”
Lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling, tears cascaded down her crumbling face.
“I’m nothing more than skin pulled over bone, why does no one see ME?” She whispered into the silent shadows. .
Thoughts of her Father had her squeezing her eyes tightly shut, trying to banish the feelings he always managed to create within her. Like a looming monster of self criticism, self loathing and self disgust, that constantly resided in the dark recesses of her mind; she could clearly hear his harsh, sarcastic tone when dealing with her. He was nagging her now.
He had always said she would never amount to much. He was right.
A man who had formed his own UK company, built from scratch after the war, now a millionaire, who felt he had wasted thousands of pounds on his daughters private education, because basically, she was still bloody stupid.
“Sure as fuck right there, Daddy dear!” she wept in the dark.
Her Mother was currently living with a new beau and simply could not entertain a daughter, especially one as complex as her. It was why her Mother had run off when she was three years old; she simply couldn’t deal with ugliness. So Mother devised excuses, lies, to belittle and condemn her daughter, to safeguard her beautiful world. The daughter never even entertained reaching out for motherly guidance or going home.
She desperately needed someone to talk to. Someone who loved her, really cared about her, someone who could feel her pain and loneliness.
She rummaged through her mind trying to find a face that fit.
Sobbing, feeling utterly broken, she realised she was alone. As she always had been. Probably always would be. She was so tired of fighting. Of just trying to be special. No one understood her at all. No one had even taken the time to try.
She sat up and climbed out of bed. She was alone in the flat.
Entering the bathroom she opened the medicine cabinet above the sink.
Strategically lined up, row upon row, were bottles of pills. Pills of every shape, colour, names she couldn’t even read. Hundreds of them, that all had a purpose to heal.
Bottle by bottle she took them out, opened the lids and poured them into the bath. Rainbow colours began to take shape. Like heavy rain they pelted the bottom of the enamel, bouncing around in manic dance, until the base of the bath was almost covered.
She climbed in.
Scooping up a handful she shoved them into her mouth. The bitterness almost made her gag. She ran the cold tap; scooping water into the palm of her hand she swallowed the pills down.
“What colour next?” she giggled, with a whimper caught in her throat.
“Take two for the pain, medicate the brain.” She said aloud. No one was listening.
Grabbing another fistful of pills, she threw back her head, opened her mouth and crammed them in, rinsing them down with cold tap water.
After a while, she stopped gagging.
After a while, nothing mattered at all.