Chapter Text
Life in Insomnia was dull.
I woke up with a few hours until my alarm was due to go off to wake me from my slumber so I could go and work my crappy job so that I could pay for my crappy apartment. Beside me was a lump of bed covers that was snoring far too loudly for my liking. I sighed, rolling over, groping for the packet of cigarettes that was on my bedside table. I opened the box and let out another long sigh as I saw there was only one left. There was no way that I could hide in my apartment with the pile of limbs next to me that wouldn’t stop snoring. No way.
I hauled myself out of bed, and rid myself of the few blankets that hadn't been snatched up and quickly got changed. It was routine of mine to go to the nearest convenience store early in the morning when I'd run out of nicotine. Every time I got to the end of a box, I'd tell myself that I really needed to kick the habit. Regardless, I'd still find myself going to the nearest store to buy another packet.
I found myself hesitating for a moment, as I hovered at the front door, bundled in thick layers to protect myself from the fresh winter wind.
Was it really okay just to leave him by himself?
I didn't know the guy. I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t rob me blind while I was gone. But as I looked around my small, shitty apartment, I knew there wasn't anything that I could really lose.
I closed the heavy metal door behind me, and began to march down the street towards the store, my last cigarette lit in between my lips. I inhaled a long breath of smoke and slowly pushed it out again, wishing that I felt some kind of immediate relief from the action.
I didn't. It still felt like my brain was tangled up in a mass of stress and anxiety. I hadn't even been awake ten minutes and I already felt burdened by the grey skies that hung over my head.
I thought about a lot of things as I took the short walk, but most of all, as I did every morning, I wondered how my life had gotten to that point. I was a mess of a human. I'd work endlessly to pay the extortionate rent, and the only relief I ever found was in other people; strangers who paid me the slightest bit of attention. I wanted to feel like I was important. I wanted to matter.
But I didn't.
And every morning after I'd feel guilty and disgusting.
Yet I'd repeat my cycle of finding men in bars who would give me one night of feeling elated, and confident. It only worked for a few hours, or until the next morning. I was sure that this was my own rock bottom. It was my personal hell of waking up each morning and trying to make some sense of why I was alive. I didn't have a purpose, or at least I felt that way.
Life in Insomnia was endlessly colourless.
There was little I could do apart from dream of a better future. Maybe the only reason that I continued to exist in Eos was so that I could cling to the idea of a better tomorrow. Yet every morning, I would start the day off wondering when that tomorrow was going to come.
Would it come? Was it something I needed to force myself into?
My thoughts continued as my boots fell into the thin layer of snow beneath them, making quiet crunching sounds. The cold air stung my bare cheeks, and made my eyes water. I continued to focus on the cigarette that was slowly getting smaller and smaller with each passing drag, yet I couldn’t find relief.
"Excuse me?" I heard a voice from behind me.
I turned to see an unfamiliar face, yet something about him immediately made me feel nostalgic. He was bundled up in as many layers as me, his blonde hair hidden beneath a hat, and the lower part of his face covered with a scarf.
"You dropped this," he said, offering my wallet to me.
I really was lost in my lonely thoughts if I hadn’t noticed that I’d almost lost something so important. I reached out my bare hand and took it from him with a half-hearted smile.
"Thank you," I replied in a hoarse voice, immediately back peddling away from him.
I saw his eyebrows knit together as he looked at me, and all I could do was lower my head.
"Don’t I know you?" he asked as he tilted his head.
It must have been someone I went to school with. Someone who I couldn’t remember. I shook my head.
"No," I answered before turning my back towards him and continuing down the street towards my destination. Even if I did know him, I didn’t want anyone to recognise me from my past self. I was different back then. I had a look of ignorance and hope that I hated to think about.
I didn't want anyone to see how I'd lost that look over the years as I pulled myself away from everything and everyone I knew.
"You look really familiar," he insisted, taking a few quick steps after me. He caught me by the shoulder, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Maybe we really did know each other at a point. I turned to him and scanned his face, his cheeks stained pink from the brisk wind that had been battering his skin without end.
"I promise you, if you do recognise me, the person who you knew isn’t here anymore," I said with an insistence that made his frown become an expression that was full of concern. I shook my shoulder free, and began down the street again.
He didn't chase me. I didn't hear any footsteps from behind me, almost like the wind had frozen him in place.
Was that what I wanted?
Maybe I was hoping for him to chase after me and save me from myself.
But he didn't.
It occurred to me at that point, as I left the figure behind me, that maybe I needed a fresh start. Maybe I needed to be away from Insomnia, so that at least if I really felt so anxious and stressed, I wouldn't feel scared of running into people who I used to know who were undoubtedly far more successful than I was. People who were undoubtedly so much happier than I was.
I had nothing left in Insomnia.
Maybe it was foolish hope that I was clinging to, but I thought on it as I reached the store. I thought on it as I walked back towards my apartment. I thought on it as I took a detour so that I could smoke more cigarettes.
My life in Insomnia was grey, and bleak. But maybe, just maybe, I was the only one who could save myself.