Have you met Sue?

Trigger warning this story contains multiple sensitive contents.

1.

Sue was a coin toss for bad luck. I know you think you are suffering, but I am going to invalidate all of your pain by consoling (one-upping) you with someone else's life, which was a train wreck into a dumpster on fire because deep down, we are all sadists who take pleasure in other people's misery.

I met Sue when I was five. The cops were on the opposite block; our neighbours had another "argument." A cop came out of the house cuffing a little girl, Sue. I heard she shot her dad in the leg cause' the bastard never learnt to use his belt correctly. By accounts, her dad was choking her mother to the verge of death until she passed out, and before he could get to Sue- BANG!

If you're wondering if Sue grew up in an impoverished household, I'll save you the trouble. No. She just grew up with shitty parents. I have never visited her home, but from what I've heard- literally, well, screaming all the time. "You ran away from home, so you are financially dependent on me; where are you gonna go?" "And I am the foundation for your self-esteem cause' without my obsessional devotion for you: you'll end up like your dad," "Oh! Yeah! I slept with my secretary- now, who needs genuine love?" "Drunk-call me five years from now when I have conquered the fucking world," "Well fuck you- no, ok, I am sorry, your right. We should stay strong for Sue. ""Yeah, while we're at that, let's add another child to the unstable marriage, so we all fucking resent each other but stay only cause 'that one time…."

But in the end, they'd manage to patch things up with some surface-level excuse.

No one knew what to do. Sue didn't talk much back then; she called herself a closeted extrovert. People just avoided her. It's a sick feeling when people show they evidently don't want you (that's why abortion should be legal, or 'legal' like drugs). She brushed it off, saying she'd "rather stand out than fit in." It was her own masochistic way of breaking her own heart.

Sometimes, she'd come to class bruised up, but no one said a word. It's scary wanting to help someone out without stepping on any eggshells because you don't want to be another trigger, so you're careful and hesitant, but at the end of the day, to them, you seem like you don't care, and to them, it would never get treated like it's a big deal.

She convinced herself she couldn't feel anything. She told me her life was just a nightmare she'd soon wake up from.

After the gunfire, Sue was sent to her grandma's for a while. In their defence, according to the legal system, the minimum age for juvie is twelve, so she wasn't put down on any criminal record. And when you come from a conservative place, well, even the police are family. So, like any sane household, we brushed it under the rug.

Here's my question; where's the fucking rug?

The abuse never stopped.

I did ask her why her mom never called somebody, said something or did something. She told her, "You're too young to understand."

We were too young.

It wasn't until I got into my first relationship that I realized what a snake eating its own tail feels like. You want to stop, but you can't. And all the green flags and red flags are a mixture of bullshit, and you can't stop until you're branded from a cigarette you put on your wrist. But somehow, the saddest and worst part of all of this is you've got to clean up after "your mess" because you've been gaslit so many times that self-love seems selfish, and even if that is some sick way you love yourself, no matter how many times you've told 'I hate me,' it is still unconditional love.

Everybody wants to feel loved; the 'right way'. I'd like to believe that, but in the world we live in, just some people exist, those folks who corona didn't get its home run for: (Sue's Dad, alive). 'It's inhuman to bless where one is cursed.'

Everybody wants to feel loved unconditionally, but nobody wants to love that way. Why do you think we want pets or babies?

Sue felt that every day. Every part of her grieved the childhood she lost.

2.

Sue used to open up in the most peculiar ways, like once, when we went to get ice cream; the pinkish red reminded her of her mom's pills. She told me it was vitamins her mom took for her low iron.

We were kids, and I believed her.

After Sue's mom left, that's when shit hit the roof. She had to mother her two-year-old sister while caring for her alcoholic dad. Depression had gotten the best of her by the time she was twelve.

To our teachers, Sue was a "promising" young student, and I hated that because she never worked. She'd show up to class, never take notes and sleep with no remorse for the teachers, but no one complained cause' she got the grades, and under the educational bureau, that is the only requirement for you to be considered 'functional.'

Sometimes, Sue used to fail tests on purpose, because "breaking your own heart hurts less." That was probably her initial jumpstart to her self-destructive divertissement.

I found out later she hated that the most about herself because, by default, with precision, she was aware of her worth, and under the grand scheme of this universe, Sue felt like she was rotten meat thrown out for the street dogs. I never reassured her that she wasn't; I should have.

But Sue left, somewhere, somehow a part of her left with her mom; She used to make gifts and give them to you because "I love you" was never ensured.

Sue became her dad. She drank a lot. Too much. I believe they call it being an alcoholic. She came to school drunk; she drank in school; she messed with the wrong crowd. Her dad was the cherry on top. She used to call me at 2 am crying because her dad went out to buy milk at 10 pm, and he'd never come back 'because of her'.

Her worst habit was manipulating herself to believe she was the problem and that the universe had predestined this miserable life for her. What a condescending bitch, the world doesn't revolve around you! Her stoicism was self-tranny! "It is what it is, "not realizing the hypnotic compulsions and persistence that twisted her lens. She could no longer view reality for itself.

She turned aloof and kept unreachable heights of expectations for herself because her pride conditioned her to be everything she couldn't be, and her ego wouldn't allow her to succumb to the raging thunderstorm she wanted to scream out just so she could be Daddy's little girl.

She said, "if I ever burn this house, I'd still come back to collect all the ashes."

Nostalgia's embitters.

3.

I could never give Sue the love she craved. Love for her was quixotic.

Sue was addicted to many things; when she loved someone or something, she'd reorganize and commit her entire lifestyle to compulsively loving them unconditionally. Until she got addicted to something else. She loved relationship-hopping and always fell for the ones that resembled her father or mother in some way. Whatcha gonna do? That's just how avoidant-anxious attachments work.

I guess that's why I mindlessly stare at her dead body in front of me.

In college, Sue carried her 5'8 best friend (Sue had bones of steel, for this girl was a petite 5’-footer), who starved herself and was puking out thick mucky blood onto the floor because, Sarah, if you don't eat for two weeks, alcohol will suffice for now, but the void will always exist, but the body won't. Sue cleaned her up and kept her conscious while trying to get me to stabilize myself from dissociating into the abyss of what's beyond. All this while Sue stayed deadly calm till things settled.

She broke down an hour later in the toilet. She drank till she was numb. She then told me the paramedics and cops surrounded her as if she did something wrong, and the sickening feeling of being in her skin gave her painful epiclesis reroute of flashbacks of her getting raped.

What do you say to that? How do any of your inspirational Pinterest quotes benefit someone who has undergone such a vile fate?

I froze. And Sue ended up comforting me for the pain she was feeling.

Sue. What do I do now?

My selfishness is swallowing me in, and your shadows are calling me back to you. I don't want to step into the sun.

4.

Sue wanted to be "someone great." Like a Nobel prize victor, or Charles Manson, rings a bell? But what did he do again?

Her plan was to get out of the Hellfire, in which she got barbequed and promise herself to keep the blade off her neck(or anything remotely sharp). What then? To her, it was impudent to even imagine she was holding onto an Ace; "It's basically prostitution."

'A shepherd always needs a bellwether- or he, himself, be one.'

She attempted suicide after being traumatized again by someone trying to kill themselves. But before she did, she called her dad, broke down, and told him everything (This is why human rights is a myth; clever people should be held accountable for their ideocracy!).

He brought her back to Golgotha, put a gun to her head and made her a committed Christian.

She believed she was destined to be "someone great" (and by that, she meant she wanted the propriety she could find in herself), like how every movie has to have a happy ending. Or else, we can't gaslit ourselves for a motive to live. Ironically, she hated those movies "because that's not realistic. Life is just a conditioned chain of collective generational trauma and half-truths, and we all simply follow algorithms; if not, we either kill ourselves or commit arson. The truth of it all is we all want change, but we don't want to."

She dreamed like Icarus. Create a world of her own (because with a hero, everything's a tragedy and a demi-god, well, that's just a satyr-play.) She believed everybody needed therapy. And wanted to construct a safe place for everybody where people could come in rent-free, dance, sing, play, paint and talk about their feelings (in that order), basically going back to the late 60s, driving in a caravan with a bunch of lucid sick hippies, and thriving by stoicism. In reality, some people want to be miserable, and the safe place was her toilet floor.

5.

I caught Sue, brain split, on the toilet floor of our apartment, at 3am today morning. The idiot OD'd, and the moment she realized she still wanted to live, she slipped on the soap and cracked her skull wide open.

When Sue was 16, she was hit by a car on April 2nd. When her dad called to break the news, it felt scripted: like in 2012, when everybody thought the world would end, so instead, they watched a movie on the world ending.

Watching Sue on the ground reminded me of Ophelia. Her arms lay open. Gazing upward like a saint, martyr, or slut.

She hated Hamlet. She especially hated Shakespeare for deceit in love and tragedy; "a conspicuous paedophile, who took pride in his erotic objection for woman, like science's modesty to offend women's body just to peek beneath their skin, finding some frivolously insolent salacious gratification over their corpse; for in revenge and love a woman is more barbarous than any man."

You got that right, Sue.

You and I have crossed all seven seas, so why'd you leave my heart dry? Why does grief feel the same with death and heartbreak? I am going to fall apart if I don't feel your touch once more. I am almost transcending from this physical illusion, and the memories of you have become my favourite movies to rewatch.

Come back, Sue, so I can try to give you the life you deserved.

Come back, Sue, sit with me for one last chai and smokes, and we'll mock the world grimly.

…

Hey, have you met sue?