Damn my luck. Damn my inner demons. Damn my insecurities. Damn my everything.
How could I have been such an idiot?
All this time, I had just been running away from everything. I had been drowning myself in my work and looking for distractions so that I wouldn’t have to look reality straight in the eye. Had my feet always been so far off the ground? I had left the spotlight in pursuit of a taste of the real world, but my head was still in the clouds.
I was running. I was avoiding the public eye because they had been so critical of me, and even after the hate subsided, I was still living as a recluse. I used to hover outside my truth in hopes that my path would define itself. I had thought that maybe if I spent my time working, some path would show itself to me. Richie and I were making the same mistakes, thinking that making the most out of our time meant working from sun up to sun down.
But what as the point of working hard if we never even took one second to make use of the results? How many opportunities had we missed? How many chances did we turn out backs to? Had we already lost ourselves to our fears?
We were so foolish to think that we were actually making the best of our time, and it may have already been too late for me.
Amidst the screeching tires and piercing screams, the broken glass and shredded metal, the urgent calls and flashing lights, was a foolish teenage girl who had forgotten what it meant to live life to its fullest. Vision blurred and consciousness fading, I was aware of only one thing: the voice in my head beating myself up for all the chances I had missed.
And I prayed that hopefully I could have just one more.
