The Vultures

THREE

My apartment is small and basic, but it's mine. My parents bought it, but it was my aunt who finished paying for it, a fact she never lets me forget. Mi name is on the contract, but her money is on the property. Still, the small apartment has become my salvation in the city, a haven I return to when the outside world becomes too much to handle.

I have three hours before I have to leave for the fundraiser, so I lie on the bed with the headphones on. The music app plays one of my favorite playlists and I close my eyes, hoping to get away from the now. My head is a jumble of thoughts and it's beginning to hurt, as if it was unable to handle the amount of activity within. I give myself a slight blow to the temple, followed by a stronger one after the first one does not bring the desired result.

Sometimes I do this. I've stopped trying to convince myself that I do it involuntarily. I now accept it, and when something aches or discomforts in my body, I hurt it. I like to think that my body thinks and feels, o something like that, so when I hurt it, I feel it, but so does him, and that puts me in control. Just the other day I was walking down the stairs and my ankle bent and made me fall, knees first, on the floor. I didn't even notice it, but my fist hit my ankle, causing more harm than the sprain and bringing me far more pain, but I didn't care. It was I who caused the pain, as punishment to the ankle.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but it makes me feel good.

I try to ignore the headache and I concentrate on tonight's event. This type of party brings me mixed feelings: on the one hand, I like to be part of it, and I enjoy putting on my tux (I now have three, since I refuse to wear the same one in every photo) and losing myself within Manhattan's high society. I enjoy drinking one too many glasses of Dom, looking as solemn as I can while wearing the ridiculous "New York Eye" identification tag, which I have to carry at all times. I love the idea, the moment, the crowd... nothing makes me feel as good as feeling like one of them.

But I'm not, and although that intoxicating environment makes me forget it for a while, the sensation never completely leaves me. Like an old friend that refuses to depart, no matter how hard I try, I can't make it go away, it follows me everywhere, sabotaging me and making me feel inadequate, even though I can be so much more than so many others that were born into that world, without fully appreciating, or even deserving it.

The music stops and I growl, angrily, while I unlock the phone. It restarts immediately and I rest my head on the pillow again, my gaze on the once white and now beige ceiling. My moods are like a seesaw, and when I'm among those people and I manage to forget about my now, even if just for a second, the heights I reach are beyond compare. But with those high highs, come the low lows, and the fall I suffer once I get to my apartment, when the night is over and I had to take a cab back to my reality, is a hard and painful one. Once the night is over, I'm a typhoon of demands and disappointments.

The music stops again and this time, I hit the phone screen with the palm of my hand, so hard it leaves my skin burning. I know this won't help and that the music will restart as soon as I unlock the phone. Indeed, once I do, the music continues playing, and I put my flushed palm against the bed, looking for some relief.

The feeling of emptiness that settles on the mouth of my stomach once I've returned to this apartment after spending a night on a penthouse on Park, is indescribable, and lately it seems to be getting the best of me. I immediately start to go through my work, reading it carefully, obsessively trying to find faults or areas of improvement, but I never find anything. Not because it's perfect, it's far from it actually, but because it's already the best I can do, and that notion enrages me. If the work is not enough, that means I am not enough, and that's something I simply cannot accept.

I'm the only thing I've got. I have no allies, no hidden abilities, I'm not an influencer and I don't have a trust fund to rely on. This is all I have, it's only me and it has to be enough, but it isn't. I once read an article about self-publishing a book successfully, and one of the most important steps according to the author, and I'm not making this shit up, was "making sure you write the best possible book". What. A. Load. Of. Shit. How am I supposed to know it's the best possible book? I will obviously think I'm writing the best possible book, and no doubt I will, according to my abilities, But, if my talent can only produce this and this is not enough, what the fuck am I supposed to do?