A different voice.
Her picture, with a loving husband and a child, her picture with a smile I never saw on her: something was missing.
The mischief was eroded from her eyes by a life that favors the daily surprises of an ordinary life over the predictable drone of addiction. I imagine that drugs can be an endless source of fun when these are interludes between stages of boredom. How much of an altered state can it be if it becomes a daily occurrence?
I stopped writing messages to her because there is no space for me on her life. Trust fund kids have this way of bouncing from rock bottom to success (in that Instagram-friendly way that makes the sun warmer and the grass greener), and I am a legacy transfer from her past life.
Just to clarify: I'm okay. Even back then, I managed to avoid excess. Thank God for a waning mental health that made me too scared of getting hooked on something. But I am still a part of a blurred past.
There is a mild sense of embarrassment that comes from unrequited love. Unrequited desire. I wanted her because she was beautiful, and I shared bed with one too many women out of despair, never out of anything more noble. I liked her eccentricity because it unburdened me from knowing her: she was the persona she played.and that was enough.
I know I have been in love. I know it because I remember it. I remember it because it was infallibly painful. But, am I able to fall in love again? Your guess is as good as mine.
I'm looking at decades of loneliness ahead of me. An empty space on my bed that extends like a tunnel of sheets through time. I embrace it, reluctantly. Nothing is as good as you were. Nothing is as radiant as the sound and vision you gave me. Nothing is as heavy as the weight of a thousand whores I slept with trying to regain a sense of self after the reality of your rejection destroyed me. Nothing is as tender as your madness, as you're howling womb. I became i because i am less, because i lost chunks of myself waiting to feel something like you. i grew [f u c k i n g h o p e l e s s ] and my life has to go on because i owe a lot to a lot of people i don't know but keep talking in my head. looking. touching my things. i want to go back but home is a when and not a where and the address got lost. i love you, i'm sorry that i love you. i love you, i'm sorry that i love you. i love you, i'm sorry that i love you. i love you, i'm sorry that i love you. it's not your fault. you just happen to look and be and smell and feel like every girl i was too scared to talk to when i was a kid, a fat kid with an old dad, a mom too young, a broken brain a fluttering sense of self, no friends. i love you, i'm sorry that i love you. i really do.