Page 1 of Falling for Fury

Addison

“Fuck you, too, Geoff!” I shout at the back of my apartment door as I finally managed to storm my 25-year-old tantrum having ass inside my apartment. This day couldn’t get worse. I never thought I would see the day when coming home to my beautiful apartment in the Upper West Side of New York City would make me sick with rage. I turn to the living room, taking a moment to settle my fury, admiring the afternoon sun streaming in from the living room windows, sunning my beautiful Areca and Ficus babies.

“Woah, firecracker, what has your titties in a twirl?” Of course, Rosie can’t say knickers in a twist or something remotely common and normal.

Geoff, that’s who has my titties in a twist. That pompous pettifogger fucking fired me. After months of working up the courage to ask that dick if I could take on more responsibility before my brain dries up and falls out of my eye sockets from lack of stimulation, he decided he didn’t “have the capacity” to keep me on. The fifth casual job in twelve months that has let me go, only weeks or days after asking for more. The cost of living is killing my savings account, and I have been trying to land a permanent position that not only will allow me to stay part-time, while not boring my brain to death, but will pay me enough that I can cook an actual meal instead of living off ramen noodles.

“Addy… are you ok?” Casey asks with concern in her voice.

Rosie, Casey, and I have been best friends since kinder, and we moved into this apartment right after Casey graduated college and Rosie returned from Madrid. Rosie’s parents might own the building, and sure, they rent this apartment to us below market value, but I allowed myself to overlook this when I could still make some sort of rental contribution. I know they wouldn’t kick me out on my ass; doesn’t mean I plan to mooch off them while I’m unemployed.

“Geoff let me go this morning. Told me they ‘don’t have the capacity’ to keep me on anymore,” I reply while mocking Geoff’s patronizing tone. I can feel my rage boiling under my skin, like little prickles making me feel sweaty.

“That motherfucker!” Rosie shouts, echoing my previous rage.

Although I know this is more out of anger for me, rather than just joining in. Both Rosie and Casey have listened to me complain on repeat about how much he demanded of me—the meetings I helped him prepare for, extra shifts I pulled, including overtime and working on scheduled holidays—all because he is a haughty shyster and refuses to do any work that is beneath him. He employed me as a casual admin assistant, giving me the workload of a full-time paralegal, and refused to pay me for it.

“We should create fake Google accounts and leave him a string of bad reviews. Maybe we should prank call his wife about suspecting an affair?” Rosie plots. I slump on the couch, huffing a pathetic attempt at a laugh. It’s really hard to poke fun when my brain has other plans. Those plans being to send me back to that dark emptiness within my mind. The deep and dark spiral of oblivion and rage.

“Appreciate the offer, Rosie, but I think I’ll pass,” I grunt, which earns me a scoff and a very dramatic eye roll.

“It’s okay, babe, we’ll work this out. I’m heading to the studio, but I’ll see what job ads I can find online for you. Don’t let it get you down; there will be something.” Casey, ever the mothering optimist, chirps as she packs her gym bag and heads for the door. Casey has always been a glass-half-full kind of woman. She is your typical rainbows-and-sunshine person who always smells like spring and probably forgot how to frown. The opposite of Rosie, who is Spanish and, somewhat stereotypically, fierce as all heck. She is the person you call to help you bury a body, defeat your bullies, plot revenge plans with, and also has the biggest heart you’ve ever known. For everything I love about these two, right now, this just adds to my growing frustration.

“Yeah no worries, Case, thanks.” She flicks me a sympathetic smile and leaves, but not before I spot her making eyes at Rosie with a look I know all too well, ‘oh boy, here we go’.

The downside to living with your childhood friends is how much of your life they have experienced with you. Albeit they see the surface of the battles I wage internally, but they have still held my hand through plenty of relationship ruining rage and self-sabotage. They are always there for support, a shoulder to cry on, to cheer me up or rage out with me, and never once making me feel like someone who is broken. I just wish I could have a chance to be that for them, too.

“I know just the thing to turn that frown upside down,” Rosie chirps as she pulls out her phone.

“If you say se—”

“Sex!” Her eyes bug out of her head. Groaning and throwing my head back to the couch.

“You really have to let this go, Rosie. I am not having sex with a stranger I met on a dating app without knowing them first.”

“You need to live a little. You haven’t been laid in forever!”

“And how would you know?” She levels me with a deadpan look and, fuck my life, she knows she is right. Don’t get me wrong, I have attempted. Downloaded SoulSwipe, the popular dating app among my fellow mid to late twenties peers, but the thought of meeting up with a complete stranger, at the danger rate of women disappearing, being raped and/or murdered? Every time I make a “bonk appointment”, as Rosie has elegantly labelled it, my anxiety gets the best of me and I bail. The app was promptly deleted.

Not wanting to feel or see her sympathy for my pathetic plight or risk her trying to set me up on any surprise sex dates—this has occurred many a time—I stand and head for my bedroom. “I think I am going to run a bath and have some wine. Perhaps binge some Vampire Diaries.”

“Okay, let me know if you change your mind about Geoff revenge or the bedroom rodeo,” she sing-songs as she strolls back to her room with all her Latina spice, dark curls, and olive skin. Sometimes I wish I could have that much light playfulness in me.

I set up my laptop on the edge of the vanity as I light a few balance and calm candles my older sister, Ava, got me for my birthday. It was her way of trying to help, which I guess is more than I can say for my older brother, Jessie. Between him and our younger sister, Riley, I suppose at least Ava tries to connect.

I settle into the scorching hot bath and pour the biggest glass of Chardonnay you’ve ever seen as I flick to season 5, episode 16. I lay in the bath, quietly sobbing while reciting Damon and Elena’s fight about being wrong for each other. Crying is usually the result of the built-up anger inside of me that has no other outlet. A lovely trait I inherited from my father is my inability to manage and display my emotions in a healthy way. In an attempt to control my anger at the world and avoid screaming into oblivion or trashing my room, I just cry. Ten years of therapy, whilst being helpful and probably lifesaving, has yet to teach me how to manage this red hot rage.

How did I end up here? Where did I go so wrong in my life that I have been fired from my fifth job in a year? I didn’t even like my job. In fact, organizing meetings, drafting court documents, reviewing contracts, responding to emails… I hated it! The only reason I stuck them out each time was because I was trying to do something that made my parents proud. Something they could rant and rave to their friends about, like they do with my brother and his business, with Ava being a mom and working. I think Riley probably feels the same, too, with the rest of us having moved out. She is with my parents alone and all but forgotten by them.

I guess I wanted to give them a reason to tell me they were proud, tell me that they love me.

I twist further into my thoughts, trying to pinpoint where I went wrong. In my cobwebs of spiralling thoughts, my inability to hold a job is somehow linked to not being able to hold a boyfriend, either. Painfully single now for almost a year, with my last relationship lasting roughly six months, the one before that even shorter.

Guilt at not being able to cover the normal rent rate hits me hard. I could use my Trust, but that gives Dad more leverage over me. I know Rosie’s parents would never kick me out—the loss in my portion of the rent probably doesn’t even hit their radar—but I don’t like the idea of mooching off them, either.

My thoughts continue to spiral out of control, and I topple straight into the never-ending spiral of darkness. The all too familiar feeling creeps in, like a dark monster from the recess of my mind that pools and leaks into every nook and cranny of my brain. I can always feel it there. When you battle depression and rage, it is never truly gone; it just sits there and waits. Waits for a moment exactly like this: when I am tired, exhausted, and truly have lost the battle of a positive outlook. The sticky despair pours itself through my veins like a thick devouring goo, making me feel numb and empty. I can’t find the will to physically move my body. You’re worthless, a burden. Unlovable. The dark and deep heaviness that aches in my bones that weighs me down and hollows out my chest where my heart is—or is meant to be. It doesn’t matter how many people I have in my life who I know find me lovable, who don’t think of me as a burden or as worthless. That subtle ache of emptiness spreads. I could just allow myself to fall under the water and let it take away the pain.

Slowly, I slip deeper into the bath, feeling the water inch up from my collarbone to my neck, to my chin, until I feel my lips go under, my nose and my eyes, and before I know it, I am completely submerged under water. I can hear nothing but the bubbles and the muffled sounds of Damon and Elena. Keeping my eyes closed, I wonder, is this the most peaceful way to go? Feeling that rage, that boiling anger and heavy dark emptiness, I have no idea how to rid myself of. It’s exhausting. Like my blood is on fire and has burnt through my body, leaving nothing in its wake but an empty shell.

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