monster.
a heavy sigh.
you fucking said it, man.
he says he doesn’t drink any more because it hurts. i say fuck that, i’ll drink twice as much to make up for his loss.
he shifts in his chair and leans slightly forward. i just keep looking at him like he’s on fire.
“what do you mean it hurts to drink? like, physically hurts? something wrong with your liver?”
i hope to god there is actually something physically or medically wrong with him because i just can not, absolutely can not comprehend any other reason that could stop someone from drinking.
“i started drinking to forget.”
“join the fucking club.”
“but the more i drank, the more i remembered.”
silence.
“remembered what?”
“her.”
“who?”
“this girl i used to love.”
oh fucking good.
he sighs again. i can feel, see, taste the sorrow slowly smoking from his lungs and out of his lips.
“what happened?”
i knew what happened. well, not any kind of fucking detailed version, but i’d heard it all, seen it all before.
“i loved her, but i was so vile, so venomous. i was full of anger and bitterness for no good reason at all.”
he shifts in his chair again and pulls out a cigarette. he holds it between his thumb and forefinger and just stares at it like it’s the first time he’s ever seen a cigarette.
“i kept everything inside. the only identifiable emotions i had were lust and anger, both of which i took out on her. i was so fucking stupid. i just, i didn’t care at all what i said to her, you know? i swear to god, i just said things to see if i could get her to cry.”
“why the fuck would you do something like that?”
he spins the cigarette into its death-locked position and brings it between his lips. he pulls out his green lighter and breathes life into it. he takes a long draw, exhales and looks down.
“i don’t know. i honestly do not know.”
“so then what?”
he chuckles and forces a crooked half smile. the kind of smile that you see when there is absolutely no reason to smile. another drag of the cigarette. another expulsion of the grayest sorrow. another heavy sigh that bears the cross of the world.
“so then, she left. she said she couldn’t fucking take this any more. she said that i should go be someone else’s problem and just get the fuck out of her life. i can’t say i blame her. if someone had treated me like that, i would have been gone long before it got to that point.”
he blinks hard and long like he is in prison and he is trying to send morse code messages through his blinks to someone that can possibly, maybe save him.
“after she left, i started drinking. i needed to make her go away, and i needed to make her go away fast. but it didn’t work. the more i fucking drank, the more i fucking remembered.”
“that’s the opposite of what happens to most people, you know.”
“i know. and i hate it. i swear to god, i hate it with everything in me. i just want to drink. i want a hundred drinks. i want to drink until i can’t fucking feel anything, and then i want to drink some more. i want to black out every day. then i want to wake up and drink some more.”
he finishes off his cigarette and rubs it out in the glass ashtray on the scratched and chipped coffee table. he breathes out the remaining smoke through his nostrils and passes his hands through his short, brown hair, bringing them to a rest with interlocked fingers on the back of his neck.
“i. i was so terrible for so long, i started to think that was actually who i was, you know? i thought i was this vile person filled with acid and bile and venom and hate. i started to believe that’s who i had always been, and that was the real me. but it’s not. it’s not.”
“then who are you?”
he laughs and smiles, and i can see his crooked front teeth, slightly yellow from only a few months of smoking religiously.
he brings his hands back down to earth and rests them on the arms of the chair.
“i’m just someone who was so afraid to love that he let that fear destroy something genuine.”
we’re all vile and fake, and we can’t stand the sound of our own voice when it calls out to someone other than ourselves. we’re all afraid to love. we’re all fucking afraid. we’re all monsters hiding in the deepest darkest depths of depravity just waiting to jump and leech onto anything that we think could possibly, maybe, just maybe be something that resembles love. and when it passes by our dark alley, we jump, we fucking jump it like it’s the last ship to shore and we suck it fucking dry. we suck it fucking dry. we’re all afraid to love, so we cover it up with bitterness and contempt and smoke-filled lungs and dead livers. we cover it up with anger and fighting and we close ourselves off and hope to god that no one gets in deep enough to sever the strings we tied ourselves off with. but sometimes, sometimes it hurts so much to not love that you just have to let it take control, take over, take you, take me, take her, take him, take it all and just let that love be enough. and sometimes that overcomes that fear. and sometimes that’s the best fucking thing in the world.
but me, i’ll just fucking drink for me, i’ll drink for him, i’ll drink enough to make us both forget love ever existed in the first place.
