Chapter Text
Here she is again, laying wide awake in bed at 3AM with a head full of spiraling thoughts. She can rarely ever get any sleep, but she seems to always be able to dig herself into the rabbit hole of negative thinking, of contemplating what-ifs, of finding all the faults within herself and agonizing over them. She blames herself for everything that goes wrong, even if it wasn’t anything within her control. Somehow, someway, it’s gotta be because of her. It always is.
But after spending so long like this, so many days and nights passing her by with a permanently bruised heart in her chest, it gets to be too much. Distractions don’t work as well as they used to, and she can’t connect with her friends like she could before. Lately, she has to get herself blackout drunk to not find her mind floating in the river of self-hatred with a million imaginative hands pointing their fingers at her, scolding her, belittling her, demonizing her. Sometimes, they even claw at her, try their damnedest to rip her apart.
It hurts and she’s aware that she’s the cause of it, but she doesn’t know how to make it stop. She’s hurting herself all the time, breaking her own heart everyday. It’s not intentional. She often feels like her emotions are in control of her, and rarely ever the other way around. How do you fix that?
Tonight, she’s sober. Tonight, she thinks she deserves to feel this way. Tonight, she’s letting herself cry it all out. She’s tired of being hungover all the time. She’s tired of being sad all the time. Maybe she can form some kind of balance between it all. Or maybe she’ll disappoint herself more by failing to.
She squeezed her eyes shut and rolled over, clutching the blankets and pulling them closer to her trembling body. So desperate to seek out comfort in something that will never give enough to her. She took a deep breath and counted to five, released it, and counted again.
Ekko doesn’t talk to her anymore. He already moved on, found someone new. Completely left Jinx behind. All she is to anyone anymore is a thing of the past. It’s silly of her to think she could be anyone’s present.
Who would willingly choose to have a ticking timebomb lingering around?
As much as she’d like to, she can’t find it in herself to be mad at any of them. She’s a problem and she knows it. She wishes she could change-- she’s tried so hard to change everything about herself-- but it’s useless. She’s useless. Hopeless. Loveless. Directionless.
It’d be so easy to blame it all on a lack of effort on her part, but that’s just not true. She pushes herself so hard all the time, constantly surpassing her limits for the sake of pleasing others, always giving her all into hiding away the jinx part of being Jinx. But it’s all for nothing because regardless of how many masks you stick over a monster’s face, you can’t change the fact that it’s still a monster underneath.
She doesn’t know what to do anymore. Where to go from here, if there is any place or any purpose in the world for someone like her. These days, she kind of feels like she’ll be stuck at home forever. She doesn’t remember the last time she stepped outside, nor the last time she even just opened a window for some fresh air. Everything is just flying by, right on past her.
It’s like she’s stuck in time, in an utterly static space where nothing new ever happens. Always the same thing over and over. She’s home, she’s alone, she does nothing productive, she either gets drunk or wallows in self pity, she goes to bed. Wake up, rinse and repeat. Of course she’d get left behind.
Vi comes over sometimes. Vi is the only one who still even tries to put up with her. She’s grateful, but she can never seem to express it. Everything she does or says is in total apathy anymore. She’s just exhausted, she doesn’t have the energy to keep up the act.
Existing is exhausting.
She really hopes Violet doesn’t hate her for it.
Realistically, she knows Vi wouldn’t. She knows her sister loves her, knows that Vi would do absolutely anything to lift her spirits in any way she can, that she would go above and beyond to prove to Jinx that she is loved. She knows that. Yet, still, she can’t help but feel like she’s nothing more than an annoyance or burden to her. That, maybe, she’s always been that way to her.
A tiny but loud and very paranoid part of her heart tells her that Vi only shows care out of obligation, not genuineness. That dealing with Jinx on occasion is just her responsibility as the older sibling, not something she’d actually choose to do out of her own free will. Like it’s a guilt thing and Vi has to at least pretend for the sake of the illusion, lest it all falls apart and Jinx crumbles completely. Something that’s probably inevitable anyways, but you can’t let it be Vi’s fault.
She knows she shouldn’t think like that, but it’s another bullet in the big, fucked up list of thoughts she cannot keep at bay. It’s not on purpose that she immediately doubts others when it comes to their feelings or view towards her, but it’s hard to accept that there’s anyone out there who actually cares. It’s just weird. An entirely foreign concept.
And right on cue, her phone starts ringing from where it lays beside her in bed.
Jinx only nuzzled her face further into the blanket, trying to hide away from reality. She hoped whoever was calling would acknowledge the lack of an answer and just go away.
But it kept on ringing till it went to voicemail, and then it rang again. Still, she ignored it. It’s the middle of the night, surely that’s a reasonable enough excuse to not pick up. You can’t be mad at her for not being able to talk right now. Right?
She really hopes so. She’ll respond to them in the morning, she promises. She just can’t find the will to speak right now, but maybe she’ll feel better after she gets some sleep. She really, really hopes so.
As futile as it seems, she really will try to break the cycle.
Tomorrow. For sure.