I Became Her

Chapter 12 -Interlude Two-

Looking back, I know I should have left. I should have left everything behind and walk away when I still had a chance to do that with little to no casualties besides myself. But my stubbornness made me stay, made me want to force some justice in situation where there was none done to me.

They broke me. And I don’t mean the broken bones or cut up skin, I mean the girl who was raised in a safe neighborhood, with loving parents and big dreams for the future. That’s what they broke. My dreams. My future.

I still remember that first night at the hospital like it was yesterday. The continuous crying that was interrupted by the pain when my heavily shaking body couldn’t take it anymore.

Every time I saw my bruised skin, I felt how these marks got there, I felt their hands grabbing mine, I felt their teeth biting into my skin like it had started all over again.

Their faces flashed before my eyes, their voices taunting me were just as real as when they actually spoke to me.

I was scared. Every minute felt like an hour.

I wanted to scream out to my mom, but what’s the point? Even if she were alive, I was stupid enough to follow a man without letting anyone know where I was heading. Well, the sad truth was that I had no one to tell where I was going. He isolated me and I let him. I thought I needed no one but him, that didn’t turn out as planned, I guess.

That night I decided many things.

First, I decided that I didn’t want to live any longer. I didn’t want to be that butchered person who I was after that night at the hotel. I wanted to stop breathing to be with my mother and Yas in the afterlife. I wanted to leave this ill-treated body and float away to heal what is left of the Alexie I was raised to be.

But it wasn’t that easy. Ending my life, I mean.

I had the supplies and opportunities, but I didn’t have what so many others in my position had. I don’t even know what to call that state of mind you need to go through with something like that. Is it courage? Maybe weakness? Or even madness? Whatever Yasmine had in her heart at the moment she stepped off the rooftop, I know I didn’t have that. What I had, was the wanting to do it without the actual mindset to finish what I had set out to do.

The saddest thing is, that unfortunately, I cannot call that moment the lowest point of my life. At that moment it definitely was, but in reality, I lived on to find out that under rock-bottom there is something darker waiting for me, something so rotten that rock-bottom would sound like a pleasant place to be.

When it was clear to me that I couldn’t end my life, I needed another plan.

Second decision. Someone had to die for what happened to me. If it wasn’t me, then the people who did this to me would have to be the ones dying. Hundreds of ideas were circling in my head about how I could make this happen. Most of them weren’t doable and for the ones I considered as viable options, I had to become someone else, someone wealthy, someone powerful with plenty of connections and places to disappear to.

So, the viable options became unviable.

Unless I can figure out how to become somebody else. I didn’t expect it to happen overnight. I just knew I needed something, some kind of a sign, that could show me I can do it, even if it took me half a lifetime to achieve my goal. Time was not an issue, I had plenty of it.

That night, that sign I had waited for, did not make an appearance.

The third decision was connected to the second one. Even without a sign, I was committed to my end game and decided to get a head start. That night I gave myself a promise that Alexie Shaw was no more. I decided to leave her in that hotel room where she was destroyed, murdered in cold blood by acts that no one should endure without consent.

Alexie Shaw, the sweet girl from the neighborhood, was gone. I gave her to the wind and let her fly away from the pain and suffering, I let her free.

From the moment I walked out of the hotel bathroom I haven’t been the same, so why should I have the pure and innocent name that has so much happiness and memories attached to it? Alexie belongs to my parents. Alexie belongs to Yasmine. But not me, not anymore.

Maybe one day I can become her again, but not yet. First, I have to do right by her, do right by Yas and so many others. Even if I fail, then I fail as someone who tried, not someone who chose to forget who or what was important to her.

I will claw myself out of the bottomless hole and place my chess pieces back on the board, 'cause this time I know the rules my opponents are playing by. I know they will cheat whenever they can and so will I. This will be the game they didn’t expect.

These were the three most important decisions I made that night, and they started to pave my future, not the one I would have chosen a week ago, but the one that gave me strength now.

Perhaps I was delusional or mentally unstable to think the way I did, but somehow, thinking myself stronger was like therapy of some sort. Giving up my old self was liberating 'cause I wasn’t tied down by my past anymore. I was abused but emerged from it with a purpose. Purpose to end this vicious circle I was pulled into.

Was it right or not, this thinking gave me the will to live and that was something you cannot buy with any kind of currency?

When the sun came up and the first light brightened up my room, I knew I was going to make it. I was going to heal, and step by step, I would go after what I needed the most- revenge.

I think I dozed off for a bit because after opening my eyes I saw that breakfast had been brought in and I didn’t hear them enter or leave.

I lifted the lid placed over the plate, and there it was, lying right next to my scrambled eggs.

Jasmine flower.

My sign.