Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
My platinum hair catches in the closet's LED strip lighting and I barely recognize my own reflection in the full-length mirror.
Trophy wife hair. Designer clothes. Abs I never noticed before.
Who the fuck am I?
I stare at my reflection and the answer slams into me with unexpected force.
I'm Scarletta fucking Desmond.
ScarletSins.
That's who I am. That's who I've always been, underneath all the self-sabotage, and unwashed hoodies, and three-day-old coffee mugs.
This closet—this whole apartment, this whole life—it proves it. This is what the writer looks like when she stops hiding. When she stops performing poverty and dysfunction like they're personality traits.
I'm... cool.
The thought is so foreign it almost makes me laugh. But it's true, isn't it? I'm cool now. I have my shit together. I wake up at 5 AM and go for runs and drink lattes I don't finish because I can afford to waste six dollars on a beverage I'm using as a prop.
But even as I'm standing here having this moment of self-actualization—this look at me being a whole-ass person epiphany—something else crashes into my brain.
A character flaw. A major one.
The old apartment.
I just... walked away from it. Packed two suitcases and left everything else sitting there like a crime scene I couldn't bear to process.
All of it still there, waiting. Like some kind of horrible museum exhibit of who I used to be.
The Girl Who Gave Up: A Retrospective.
I left it because... what? Some fucked-up part of me thought maybe I'd go back one day? That I'd need an escape hatch back into dysfunction if this whole "being okay" thing didn't work out?
Why the fuck would I ever go back?
I need to get rid of it. All of it. Every last piece of that life I've been dragging around like dead weight.
Like, right now. Tonight. This minute.
I grab my laptop and flip it open with more force than necessary. The screen glows to life and I navigate to Google with shaking hands.
Junk removal Idaho Falls.
A dozen results appear and I click the first one with a functioning website. There's an online booking form and I fill it out rapid-fire, barely reading the questions.
Address. Date. Time. Special instructions.
Take everything. I don't care where it goes. Just get it out.
I hit submit before I can second-guess myself.
It's late and I'm tired, so I'm putting this day to bed. But tomorrow I'm going over there to grab the two things I still want and burn the past down so I can never crawl back into it again.
Holy shit. I have a goal.
The realization makes me pause, laptop still warm on my thighs, cursor blinking on the confirmation screen.
I have a goal. An actual, concrete, "I'm going to do this thing tomorrow" goal that isn't just "survive" or "try not to implode."
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. Small at first, then wider.
After six months of aimless wandering and depression, the new me is... here.
I'm here.
I'm her.
The girl in the mirror with the platinum hair, and the statement pieces, and the abs she didn't know she had.
The girl who books junk removal at ten PM on a weeknight and doesn't spiral about it for three days first.
The girl who's done performing poverty like it's a personality.
I'm fucking here.
The next day I do my regular run routine, but skip the coffee shop. Instead I drive over to my old apartment.
When I open the door, it smells stale. Like old laundry—which, fair. There are piles of it everywhere.
And I'm… embarrassed.
Absolutely fucking mortified.
I close the door behind me and walk into the small living space. How did I get to be such a slob?
But it's not really a mystery, is it? And the answer comes right out of my mouth before I can stop it. "You were depressed, Scarletta. For probably—hell, your whole damn life."
The words hang there in the stale air of the apartment.
It's true.
I've been depressed for so long—years and years of it, this low-grade fog that settled over everything—that it took me six full months of structured routines and forced normalcy to even begin to recognize what happiness might look like. What it might feel like if I ever let myself reach for it.
But now… I know what this place really was.
It wasn't a home. It wasn't even a proper living space. This cramped, cluttered studio with its piles of unwashed clothes, and dishes crusted in the sink, and that futon I never bothered to make—it was a holding cell. A place I retreated to when the world got too loud, too demanding, too real.
It was where I came to disappear.
This apartment was my desperate, failing attempt to hold on to whatever threads of sanity I had left. To maintain some illusion that I was a functional adult with a life, even as I let everything—my body, my space, my finances, my relationships—rot around me.