Ruination

18. Enough

-Winners need an audience-

-I was just there to applaud-

Sila

The little me had dreams, but she was lonely. I was lonely. I had a family, yet no friends. I had no friends, and it cut how despite being surrounded by my cousins, I was alone.

It is the attitude.

People can make you feel alone. Being excluded can make you feel alone. When people take you for granted, you feel alone. Some families are only connected by blood.

I was just a cousin-nothing more. 

I was taken for granted, the sloppy second choice of my popular cousins who could never get over my weird habits.

'Why doesn't she party like us?'

'Why doesn't she make friends?'

I was shy, awkward and insecure. Always. I wanted to feel needed, important-just wanted, and that is what my age fellows could never give me. It got lonely, so terrifyingly lonely. Every person wants to relate, be wanted, but there are only a few open arms that offer that. 

I didn't fit in, despite all my efforts, and no one tried to pull me out of my own complexes and insecurities. 

No one told me that I was enough. 

Eliyas did. He told me all the lies that I had wanted to hear. To be pulled out of the shadows and forced to be acknowledged. My parents adored me, and they expected a lot from me. My cousins took me for granted. They only took interest in me when a boy started to like me. 

I wasn't important enough to be heard by many.

There was always something I had to give to be loved.

That is why it was so easy to drop me. 

I was stuck in a rather lonely place, and Eliyas had sensed that. He had seen that as the perfect opportunity to strike. I hadn't cared about the noises that stopped me from giving my heart to a stranger. I didn't care, because one look of pure adoration, one affectionate confession, had been my ultimate weakness. 

I was weak for love. 

I was so weak for envying all those couples that were each others' support system. 

It was just how I saw I would be finally treated important.  A man by a woman's side guarantees respect in this society. A single and awkward woman is easy to ignore but not a married one. It was just how this society worked, and I hated it for doing that. I hated how I could give it all, do my best, and still my efforts would always be overshadows by pitiful gazes that wondered when I would get married. 

I did...and just see how that turned out to be.

I had just been so pathetic, so desperate for love and affection.  

So cold, so out of my mind that I was on the brink of turning mad. Sanity, I had always thought it was a concrete concept. No....it was completely the notion most hard to grab. The traumas and mental illnesses were tough to tackle. I had never before lost complete control. My head was in constant pain, agony...everything hurt. It was a blur in my head and I felt so trapped. I wanted to claw out of the prison of my own mind because everything hurt so much. Everything! But I couldn't. 

Waking up to a darkened room, the smell of gun powder and diesel hit me hard. Rubbing my eyes, as my heartbeat raced erratically in confusion and pain, I sat up straight and found myself sitting on a dirty floor of a rather dark room. There was hardly any light and oxygen.