Vices: Love, drugs and rock n’ roll.
It was amazing how daunting a little plastic stick could be. A stick that told you your life hung in the balance, that everything could - and would change for you. This plastic stick had been a recurring object in her life. Once when she was fifteen, and two little lines appeared on the stick. Then once when she was nineteen - luckily she was not pregnant that time. With stress and the way she treated her body, she was worried when she was late and thought she would have to live through another pregnancy.
Her aversion to pregnancy was only because the last time she had been pregnant, she had nothing to show for it. No baby, not even much weight gain, it only looked like she had devoured a huge meal. She got back into shape within a few weeks and it was like the whole pregnancy had disappeared. It was after she had given birth to her daughter that she promised herself that she would not have another child. If her whole family couldn’t be together, she didn’t want a family. She had truly been traumatized.
At twenty three, she was in the same situation. Most people would say, why sleep around when you know the possible outcome. It was an issue that she had always had, she needed to make people love her and one way was getting them to fuck her. She wasn’t delusional enough to think that they actually loved her - but the closeness felt right. She thought back onto who would have been the father of this child. Would she say anything, if she was pregnant? Absolutely not. He would never know.
She stood up from the edge of her bathtub and walked over to the pregnancy test. She felt sick to her stomach when she saw two pink lines. She looked at the time, and she knew what she needed to do. After a few calls, and scheduling - she was on her way to the nearest abortion clinic. She had a flask and syringe in her purse, to numb herself as soon as she was done. She got in, they made sure she was actually pregnant. She was, but it was too early to hear the heartbeat. Thank god, that would only make the process harder.
Once the procedure was done, she went into the restroom. She leaned against the wall, and tears rolled down her cheeks. Things were fucked, and Rumi knew that. She prepared her syringe, shot up, and by the time she exited the bathroom, she was a ghost of herself. She stayed silent, paid the fee and left through the back entrance. She got home, and she started the day again.
She took a nap, then she did her makeup and went to her filming area. Nothing in her life had changed, and the silence of it all was weirdly calming. She was the only human that knew aside from her doctor. She was sworn to doctor patient confidentiality. Everything had changed, yet it was all the same. Nothing had truly changed in Rumi’s life aside from a knowledge that no one else knew.
She worked, she edited, she got ready, she partied. That was the way the rest of the day had gone, and she was numb. Nothing felt wrong, but it didn’t feel right either. She was just floating into an oblivion of drugs and alcohol, the only thing that seemed to matter to her, the vices she had to erase the memories and secrets that she kept.
