I'm still a good girl, aren't I? Mommy always told me that, because good girls get to have good things.
I never had good things. I never had good grades. I never got to go to my dream college. I never got my dream job. I had nothing. But one day, it finally came. My good thing. It was as if the world had finally forgiven me. It was during work hours at the cafe I worked at. There I met him. The light that was promised to me. He smiled at me, talked to me, enjoyed me as I was. It didn't take long before we got together. We met every other day, doing everything together. We even shared a cup of coffee. Too many times. The coffee got hotter, and hotter, and hotter, until it burned.
While we were drinking, my eyes glanced upon his wrist. A little sparkle on his second finger. I excused myself immediately. He must have forgotten to remove it. What have I done? How long has it been? Months? Years? All this time and only now have I realized it? I tried to break it off with him, but… it's pulling me back. That earthiness, the thickness, the smell of that coffee. It is as hot as ever, yet now when I taste it, it's bitter. Yet I kept drinking, and drinking, and drinking. Who am I kidding? I already knew about it, ever since our second meeting. I didn't not recognize it, I was ignoring it, as if it wasn't real. Giving myself excuses, I must be seeing things, it must be just jewelry, a gift from a friend. But I already knew. Yet I kept drinking.
I even drank at his house. The coffee was as hot as ever, yet it tasted more bitter. I saw his home. The pictures. They gnaw at me. They burn me. A family of two, then three, then four, then five. It grows ever more. Yet I have no place in it. A picture I wish to be in, yet will never be in. I am not a good girl. I deserve it, all of it. I deserve my grades, my college, my job. A barista who can't even make her own coffee, instead drinking off of others.
I had cut ties with him. With everyone. I hide in my so-called home. I haven't left. I haven't gone out. Scavenging for scraps of food in the fridge, yet finding no appetite to even eat. That taste of coffee, it still lingers, it still calls to me, that earthiness, that thickness, that bitterness. I can't. I shouldn't. I keep telling myself to move on, yet his number still beckons me to call. I can still go back to all of that, to the coffee that we shared. But that shame, that despair, of knowing I shouldn't, that I couldn't. What do you even call something that is not even human? Something that looks like one, yet you cannot for your life's sake even call it human. An ape? A beast? No, even lower than that. A pest.
How many missed calls do I even have? I don't even want to look at my phone, I don't want to be reminded. I wanna go home, back to my mother, back to where I came from. I just…
Don't want to be anymore. To disappear from the world, without anyone even noticing. A permanent vanishing act. I wish I didn't even live. I wish I was never born. So that this world wouldn't have to feel ashamed, disgusted, humiliated by this excuse of a pest. The cog that keeps this cycle of pain. I want to go back, into my mother's womb, and put that umbilical cord to good use. I don't deserve anything, I was never good. To think that so many people wish for so much in life, yet I did not wish for much. And where did that get me? To the bottom of the bank.