Finding It (Losing It, #3)(25)

But I owned my mistakes. Because they were mine. They’d been my choice.

Except for once. There’d been only once in my life where I’d had no control. That was the moment when I realized that beneath everything beautiful, everything rich … there lived an ugly pit that would pull and plunge and smother you if you let it. And once you’ve been there in that pit, it never quite leaves you. You can try to scrub it off or cover it up, but it lives under your skin, unreachable.

My stomach pitched, and I lurched for the toilet again. I dug my fingers into the porcelain until they hurt. I told myself the tears were just a natural by-product of being sick.

Nothing happened. Not last night. Not back then. Nothing happened. So, stop it. Just stop. You’re being dramatic. It was nothing. Nothing.

I wanted to hit something or run or scream. I just needed to do something. But the only thing I could get my body to do was to curl up on the cold tile floor.

You’re being overdramatic.

God, I’d heard those words so many times, they just happened, like muscle memory. I shivered and pressed my cheek into the tile, hard.

It had taken me so long to stop feeling guilty, to ignore the shame. And now I could feel the ugly emotion curling and winding through my gut like weeds.

I didn’t know what happened last night, but whatever it was, it hadn’t been my choice. And I had promised that would never happen again. While trying to stay still for my nausea’s sake, I slid my hands across and down my body, looking for a clue or hint of what might have happened to me last night. I was scared to even think the word that hung unsaid on the tip of my tongue.

You weren’t raped. You’ve never been raped.

I thought it again. I thought it half a dozen times.

It was a familiar mantra, and it helped about as much now as it had then … not at all.

No matter how many times I thought it, no matter that there was nothing torn or painful, I couldn’t stop the tears choking at the back of my throat.

If someone was going to drug and rape me, they wouldn’t have left me in this nice hotel room. There were no marks or bruises that I could find. I was making a big deal out of nothing.

I always made a big deal out of nothing.

So, I pushed it away. I forced myself off the floor. I willed myself into the shower stall and turned the water as hot as I could stand it.

I kept chanting, You’re fine. Nothing happened. You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re always fine.

And I was fine … until I wasn’t.

Until the warm water hit my face, and a sob wrenched from my lungs. Until my legs gave out, and my knees slammed into the tile. Until I could no longer pretend that this epic failure was the trip of a lifetime and was going to miraculously show me whatever path my life was supposed to take. That it was going to fix me.

If I couldn’t manage to be happy here in this gorgeous, exotic city, how could there be any hope for the rest of my life? I had everything I could want, but it never stopped—the ache, the emptiness. Nothing ever satisfied it.

I sat on the shower floor and pulled my knees up to my chest. I leaned my head on my knees and let the water pelt my back.

I hated myself for the weakness, for my inability to just deal, but there comes a point when you’re so far down in the pit that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, not a pinprick or a soft glow. There is black and more black pressing into you, choking out the world. And asking how you got there and why you can’t get out is a pointless exercise because you’re too deep to do anything about it.

I knew other people had it worse. I knew that. I knew that what happened when I was twelve could have been a lot worse.

I just wished that I knew why I couldn’t f*cking let it go. Every time I thought I had, life tripped me and shoved my face into the muck of my past, and taught me just how far I was from being over it.

Maybe I should just book a flight back to the States. I could visit Bliss in Philly, build up my resolve, and just go home. What was the use in fighting it?

Whatever I’d thought I was going to do here—the adventure and the living that I’d been looking for—wasn’t happening. If anything, I was more confused and more lost than before. I’d been trying to outrun my issues, racing from bar to bar and city to city, but after a while the differences in location didn’t matter. Because I was the same in every city. Inadequate.

It was stupid, but in my head this trip had become the indicator for the rest of my life. I’d thought it would jumpstart something, that it would give me the momentum to move forward. I had pinned every hope, every doubt on this trip, intending it to fulfill the former and dash the latter. Unfortunately, it was doing the opposite.

Maybe it was time to cut my losses.

The permanent knot in my stomach loosened slightly.

The water battered my back, and I took each tiny blow, willing the water to take some of me with it. Slowly, slowly the tension melted out of my muscles, my lungs lost that aching feeling, and the sting of emotion at the back of my throat receded.

Life was easier when you stopped caring, when you stopped expecting things to get better.

Feeling more in control, I dragged myself off the shower floor. I shut off the water, and reached for a towel.

Then I scrubbed.

At my hair. My face. My skin. I scrubbed myself dry while all my hopes for this trip, for life, twisted down the drain.

I left my hair wet and wavy, and collected my things from where someone had placed them neatly at the foot of the bed. I balled up my wet swimsuit in the T-shirt I’d been wearing and did the walk of shame wearing the wrinkled shift dress I’d worn yesterday before the baths.