Prologue

Did you ever have that feeling that you weren’t whole? That something or someone was missing from your life. No matter who you were with, you always felt alone. I feel like that every day of my life. I have my friends and even a boyfriend, if you can call him that, but they just aren’t filling the void that seems to surround me all the time. It’s like the other half of me is someplace else, and I’m just this casing of a body that’s walking around trying to pretend that happiness is all around me.

My mom even wanted me to go to counseling at one point in my life, during my tenth-grade year of high school, she was worried about me not being socially receptive. Whatever the fuck that is, right? So, I started going out more with Ashlyn, mainly to parties that her ‘social’ friends held. I even accepted Vance’s proposal that we date exclusively, meaning I only go out with him while he fucks the rest of the female population at our school. Mom got off my case about counseling, and I continued my entertaining ways like she wanted. I think she meant more of a club or some volunteering and not the countless hours that I spend with my head in a toilet because I drank too much or slapping Vance’s hand away every five seconds from my crotch because that’s the only thing that ever crossed his mind.

I made a resolution halfway through my senior year that I needed to stop partying so much and finally settle into the real world…adult life was coming up quickly, and I couldn’t very well continue this way of life and expect to get anywhere. The emptiness and feelings of lonesomeness would return, not that they ever went away, but the effects of the alcohol always drowned them out. The vacancy that I felt, the one that made me feel incomplete, had a hold on my life and wouldn’t let go. Sometimes, I wish I could close my eyes and never wake up. Sometimes, I feel there is someone else out there that feels the same way I do. Until we find each other, until we come together as one, we are just empty shells.