euphoria

Everything was a blur, and suddenly, Deon was standing beside her.

            “What’s wrong, Eowyn?” he asked, looking into her watery eyes. Tears were running down her cheeks, and she was wringing her fingers in anxiety. “Read it.” She muttered in between short breaths, and pressed the article into Deon’s hands.

            He read it quickly in silence. “Lyra Esporia…” he said softly, “That’s your mother, isn’t it?” Eowyn nodded. “You never knew about this, am I right? Jon never told you?”

            “Yes,” she said, trying to regain control of herself. “He never told me about my own mother. You would think I’d deserve to know. But his betrayal means almost nothing. It’s the truth about her that hurts. And after all this time I believed she was just the victim of a tragic accident, but no. It wasn’t a tragic accident. It was a stupid  and heartless act of a drug addict.” She spat the last words.

            “Heartless?” Deon asked. “You’re mother was heartless? How?”

            “If she wasn’t heartless, she wouldn’t have done it.” Eowyn replied. “She would have thought about her parents, or her sister, or her daughter! She never thought once, that if everything went wrong, then maybe her daughter would have to grow up without a mother!”

            “Stop judging, Eowyn, please stop judging your mother.” Deon softly touched Eowyn’s chin, and turned her head so he could look into her eyes. “There’s got to be more. There’s always more, actually. There’s a reason for everything. I’m sure she wasn’t heartless, and I’m sure she loved you. There’s got to be more than just an overdose.”

            “Maybe there is more, but either way, it’s the same ending.”

            “Maybe so,” Deon said, “But you can either give up on her now or wait for a little more truth.” He smiled encouragingly at her.

            She smiled sadly back. “I don’t know, Deon,” she shrugged. “I think I’m going to go home now. Thanks for coming, it means a lot.” She picked up her bag and neatly folded the newspaper article in half. She put it in her pocket, and walked outside with Deon. I don’t want to give up on my mother, she thought to herself, because sometimes, she was the only one that gave me hope. 

     She thought of her life as a game of cards. She bet money, and she lost some of it. She risked everything at each play, and if she lost it, it didn't matter. She could always play again. It was only a game, after all. A stupid game. A useless game. A game that would end, either way. A game called life.

     She never spent a day without music. Every day, with both headphones in and constant Bob Marley, she'd toke, hit and cough. Eat, and spark up again. She didn't do work. Instead, she blazed. Sometimes she'd light a cigarette in her room - a pack of Marboros and a lighter were always next to her bedside, but she didn't like cigarettes that much. She never cried. She just gave up on everything, and nothing mattered anymore.

     She liked being high best. All of her problems went away. "Gravity is overrated" she always said. Or "Get high to forget, but never forget to get high." Weed was her drug, her medicine, her peace. Shrooms were her escape. Cigarettes were her boredom. And heroin was her killer.

     She had a daughter.