Five Thousand Miles, Rae

‘I’ve spent my whole life hurting myself mentally, well mostly mentally. Sometimes without realising it, and sometimes knowing exactly what I’m doing. Falling in love with people I should have no reason to fall in love with, people who aren’t mine to have, I guess I need to grow up when it comes to happy endings and love stories. I know what I’m doing to myself right now, the same thing I’ve always done, except this time it’s a mixture of both physically and mentally. I’m killing myself. If I know I’m hurting myself why don’t I stop? Why am I torturing myself? I guess, I like it, at least I know I’m alive that way. Although don’t get me wrong I love drugs. I love them and they don’t leave me, they don’t break my heart. And even better they numb the pain, there’s nothing better than not being able to feel your face. I know they’re likely to kill me eventually but at least we’ll die together. It’s better than a broken heart killing me. If you’ve found this I can give you one piece of advice in this world, don’t fall in love, especially not with your best friend, because everything is fun and games until somebody falls in love. There’s just too much to lose. Walk away, even if it’s five thousand miles away.’ – Rae Turner 17/09/16

“These violent delights have violent ends”. That’s what Rae was currently getting tattooed on her arm. There are many different famous quotes which came out of William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ but this was the one that she always remembered. There were very few things that she truly loved and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was one. I can think of the others… I think every day how different everything would have ended if she had gone by what the Friar had said on Romeo and Juliet’s wedding day to the two star crossed lovers.

“I can see it Leo.”

“Eh?”

“LA. Us in LA. That would be the best thing, wouldn’t it? Just imagine.” I sometimes can still hear that optimistic voice echoing it in my head and I can also sometimes still see the massive smile on her face as well which was there when she said it. I wish she had never said it. We were just friends but I knew she loved me. I know what you’re probably thinking. If I knew she loved me why did I not do anything about it? I like to think it is because she was my best friend but that’s not true, I liked knowing she was in love with me, it made me feel good about myself at least then I knew she’d always be there if I ever decided I wanted her. I guess I thought she’d wait on me forever. I knew I was both killing her and making her happy at the same time and I’ll admit to you that I liked that, I liked that I could make somebody feel like that.

“What? Me and you? In LA? Are you mad?”

“Think about it me and you in la la land. You know it’s where I’ve always wanted to go. We go out there to this massive city where nobody knows our names and just be free.”

We lived in a small town in Scotland, five thousand miles away from Los Angeles. She knew we were ‘just friends’ but for some reason she was convinced that I would come with her, she thought we had always been more than that. She thought I was in love with her and I just never admitted it. Although she was starting to now realise that was all in her imagination. She was starting to realise I wasn’t coming with her. “We’re twenty years old. We can’t just move five thousand miles around the world. We’d never survive”. By this point we were leaving the tattoo parlour and Rae had decided she had heard enough. She told me it was fine, she didn’t need me she could go herself and drove home, broken hearted. I should’ve known that nothing good would come from her moving five thousand miles away on her own, broken hearted. She was completely infatuated with the idea of the Los Angeles scene and most of all being seen.

A week later that’s exactly what she does. She gets on a plane on her own to prove that she can do it and her dreams are not ‘mad’, as I had previously said. She always had a desire for the whole world to know her name but at the same time loves going places people don’t know her name, she can be whoever she wants to be. So, LA seemed like the perfect place. Rae, you stupid girl, I wish you had known the mistake you were making and I wish I didn’t delete every text I typed on my phone to send to you.

‘It was like, James Dean, for sure. You’re so fresh to death and sick as ca-ca-cancer’. She sang along in her head. Lana Del Rey her favourite singer, to try and calm her nerves down on the plane, despite how much she wanted this she was very anxious. But she knew she had to fight through the nerves.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t noticed a change in Rae on the come up to that day in the tattoo parlour. It was clear it wasn’t a spur of the moment decision; she had been thinking about it for a while. She had started distancing herself from many people in her life and focussing on herself and the life she could have in LA, a life which at that point wasn’t real. It was a vision, a dream, a dream with me in it. An untrue one.

“Have you spoken to Rae? She’s so brave to go five thousand miles away on her own, wouldn’t catch me doing it.”

“No, me either…” I responded to my mum, trailing of as I said it.

“Have you spoken to her?”

“No I think I might message her later, see what the flight was like and what she’s been doing.”

“You should, she’s a lovely girl. I always wanted you two to end up together.”

“Aye well, no chance of that happening anymore mother.”

‘How did we get here Rae? It’s been a rollercoaster eh? How did we even survive this long? I know I never told you to stay, I know I never told you I’d go but you know me, I can’t escape my pride but I guess I’m trying to run from it now to tell you this. You’re 30,000 feet in the air right now and I’m lying on my bed in this same town. When you first told me I hoped it would be a phase but I know it’s more than that. You need this, and you’re gonna love it, they’re gonna love you and you’ll stay forever babe. Leaving me and your life behind. I keep on thinking, that you keep on thinking that you wish I had told you, you should stay, that I can’t let you leave me, that this is your home, this is where you belong. But I saw you changing, the tattoos, the style, the ambitions, you had to go and you had to go without me. My mum said she thought we would end up together but you’re so much better than that, no chance of that anymore.’ I typed and immediately deleted. I couldn’t send it to her. When I wake up I’ll move on and when she steps off the plane she’ll move on.

Eleven hours later and a beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed twenty year old girl is stepping of a plane in LAX. I can only imagine what she looked like. A beauty queen. Her family has a lot of money so she knew she could spend and spend here. If her daddy continued giving her access to the money, that is. She couldn’t contain her excitement at the fact she was finally in California. The fact she could be Hollywood. Fast cars. Beverly Hills. Designer clothes. Drugs. Alcohol. Anything. Everything and nothing.

That was her life from then on. Going to all the clubs. The rough ones, the decent ones and the ones the celebrities go to. Having relations with dealers and degenerates and never sleeping during the night, unless she passed out. All because of her broken heart. She wasn’t only going out in California; she made her way to Nevada occasionally. Tonight, was one of them times. After several hours of casinos in Vegas she heads to a party she wasn’t invited to but heard people talking about. The party was in a club, not just any “normal” club but it was the only kind she’s been going to lately. The kind with nobody good for her. The kind that if authorities were to go into they could shut it down and arrest every single person inside, no doubt about it. As she walks in somebody stands out to her immediately. A man standing with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, like most of the people in there. He didn’t look like he belonged in this century, with his hair gelled into a messy quiff almost like he spent a while combing it back until it was perfect then ran his hand through it to mess it up. He had sharp cheekbones, a fierce jawline and was wearing a plain white t-shirt, denim jeans and a red jacket. The way he smoked that cigarette was like an art form, she could look at him forever. Then it hit her, James Dean, he looks like James Dean and he was walking towards her. His piercing blue eyes not loosing contact with her as he walked. It was like something out of a movie scene. Little did Rae know that she would come to regret ever meeting this beautiful monster. You thought her lifestyle was bad before. In just two weeks this man turns her into a mess of a drug addiction and eyes that look but don’t see. Rae becomes attached to him though, obviously, he has no feelings for her, he was always just looking for one thing from her, and after making her a mess of a drug addict he disappears never to be seen by Rae again. When he first met her he told her he likes the ‘bad LA girls’ and then he gave her something, she didn’t know what it was but he told her to rub it on her gums, and she did because she was already infatuated by him, it made her face go numb, and she loved it. He later told her that one day she’s gonna realise why she doesn’t have any friends. Then finished of the sentence by calling her a bitch. Oh, Rae, you took being a ‘bad girl’ to a whole new level, a whole new scale, you had no idea.