more CRW shit; etc

Life has been coming at me non-stop, and I love it. Live fast, die young.

Really though, I need to develop this piece into something a bit longer for my Creative Writing workshop. Any and all criticism or support or ideas would be preesh'd, yo.

-->She touched the tips of three fingers to the warm, puffy area of broken skin that stretched taut over the bone of her eye socket and cursed quietly. Her slim and tattooed arms reached out to support her thin frame against the sink, and she raised her lids, one heavy and dark with swelling, to meet her own gaze in the mirror. She hated the fine strands of hair that hung in a limp frame about her face; she hated the pinkish, mostly-faded acne marks and the way her collar bones jutted out. Sarah felt a discomfort in the center of her stomach which radiated through her body a sensation she couldn’t name. It felt cold, it felt lonely, and it made her body ache in a dead way. She continued to scrutinize herself, her eyes seeming to find plenty of flaws to focus on. She hated the way her freckles blended together in places and resembled blotchy birthmarks, and she hated the tiny gray sun-specks in the whites of her eyes. Somehow thinking only of these, these permanent and virtually unnoticeable imperfections made it easier to avoid the fresh and bloody deformity that now razed her face. The swelling had increased, it seemed, and the space around her right eye was darkening further. She always hated watching this, the bruising process. Bruises didn’t appear on impact, she knew, but rather ripened and swelled visibly like some rotting fruit. The only interregnum in the vast purpling bruise that surrounded her eye was provided by the bloody tears and cuts in her skin. She was too drained from the emotional exhaustion that comes with crying and screaming to feel anything passionate; she didn’t even hate him, she was too tired to. But beneath the exhaustion and beneath the withdrawal she felt as her adrenaline receded and even deeper than that cold feeling of loss and loneliness in her stomach, Sarah felt the need to leave. She needed to get out for good, and she needed to do it today. Because no matter how many times he apologized, and no matter how many times she wondered if maybe she actually deserved it, she knew this was never going to get better. Dean was never going to get better. Sure, it was easy to think that all couples fight, everyone gets angry, and it was with those thoughts that she had appeased herself thus far. Something was different this time, though, whether it was in the way he kept drawing his fist back again and again even as she cowered away or whether it was something insider her that had finally snapped. As she planned to leave, her thoughts drifted almost comically to a country song she’d heard a few times. No, she wasn’t going to go home and load her shotgun and had no intention of showing him that little girls were made of “gunpowder and lead,” but somehow she loved the thought of doing so. She tossed her make-up in her bag, knowing she would need it. She rifled through her closet, grabbing anything else she might ever want to see again. She smiled bitterly and tossed that black eyepatch from Halloween two years ago in to her backpack. Just in case the make-up wasn’t doing the trick, she mused.

She wandered around his house one last time, making sure all of her belongings that had been left here at Dean’s apartment over the years was stuffed safely in her suitcase. Dragging her suitcase behind her and slinging her backpack over her shoulder, Sarah headed for the door. She paused when she glanced in the kitchen. WIth a burst of Miranda Lambert-like need for justice, she rushed into the kitchen. He had always been so particular about his food, and this was her chance to finally help herself to whatever she pleased. Throwing the door to the fridge open, she grabbed the last cold can of PBR. Fuck Dean, fuck all his stupid rules and his possessiveness of her and of his damned beer. This was it. She snapped the pop top and reached for the handle of the door. Damn did it taste good.