I don't want coffee, but I'm making it. It smells so wonderful, so routine, so beautifully predictable. I love those sounds my coffee machine makes, like someone's sucking back all the mucus in their throat. It's an odd comfort, but it's my comfort. So very few things are mine anymore.

I love that feeling you get after a long day of consuming nothing but coffee, then at the end of the night you just want to rip out your intestines and never drink coffee again. It's a painful love, but it's my love. So very few things are mine anymore.

So that's how I start off my days. Every day, for the past 10 years. Sometimes I wonder how it all started, I retrace my caffeine-laden steps and it's always the same thing. The same day has been happening for 10 years. Sure, the date changes, the years roll right along, but I'm still here. Still stuck in the same place I was in 1997.

1997, that was a good year back then. Now it's not. Now it's just a reminder of how truly pathetic I am, and how I'm going absolutely no where with my worthless little life.

Worthless. It's kind of ironic to call me worthless, being that I've climbed my way to the very top of the prostitution ladder, and go for five grand a night. And I'm busy every night.

I'm pathetic. This is what high-school drop outs do. This is what confused teenage girls turn to. And you'd think I would've been like the rest of them, you'd think I'd want something more, and go back to the way things used to be. But it doesn't matter anymore, it's been so long, I can't even remember the way it used to be. I'm not a confused teenage girl anymore, I'm a poor excuse for a 27 year old. A 27 year old that says she's 21. I never cease to make myself even more hopelessly deplorable.

Every day I tell myself this is the last day. I tell myself I deserve better, I can do better. Five grand a night, if I could save up, I could move on. But I can't. I have debts to pay, I have people to please. If I fail, I'll end up like the rest of them. Dead in a dumpster, and no one will know my name. People will walk by and say 'Poor Tia, she was a great fuck.' My name isn't even Tia. I don't think anyone really knows my name, for the past 10 years I've been using Tia Johnson, because I've been too scared and paranoid to say the real thing.

Coffee's done. I pour myself a steaming glass, no cream or sugar. "Today is the last day." I said to myself before I took the first sip.