to fall from above

midge kelly
Nov 7 · 73 min read

***

There it was again, that strange feeling. It was from the past and the future, but I was feeling it in the present. It was beautiful and twisted, light and dark, but not gray. It was a feeling that had no word attached to it. I couldn’t place it. It was a feeling I felt when I was a child, though I couldn’t remember on what occasion, and it was a feeling I felt again the first time I had seen her face.

Years later, the feeling was back. It was back and stronger than ever. Now it was more melancholic than it had ever been, though it brought me some odd comfort. It wasn’t like being held in the arms of a lover, it was the comfort of hanging off the ledge but not caring whether you fall or not. It was like not knowing what was waiting for you down below.

I had to wonder if it was a drug induced memory, or a memory I had gone back and filled in a feeling for and then connected it to a feeling I felt years later. I had to wonder if it was some form of love. Maybe she really was my soulmate and this was the feeling of being separated from a part of my soul. Maybe that’s why it felt so good as a kid but always left me questioning. Maybe I was waiting for my soulmate. Maybe that’s why it felt so good when I held her. Maybe that’s why it still felt so tough years later.

But she was gone and I was alone. Only that feeling was left, and every time it came back it left me further and further away from what was in front of me.

***

When you don’t like yourself you start to alienate people. They think you don’t like them. You leave places early if you even show up. You can’t hold eye contact. You have nothing to say. People can’t see what’s in your head. You just seem uninterested. You just seem uninteresting.

I couldn’t stand myself. To cope with it, I had turned to partying hard. Real hard. I didn’t do anything like that in high school, but by the time I was in college, I was crazy. I was the life of the party. I was still quiet, but I knew how to turn up.

Sometimes, that second side of yourself is what makes someone fall in love with you.

I guess she thought I was cool, but I wasn’t. I literally just didn’t like myself. She approached me as I was smoking a cigarette out on the steps.

“I hate parties, too,” she said with a sarcastic grin. “I don’t know why I even come to these things, there’s just nothing else to do. Life’s boring, I guess.”

I didn’t even respond. I thought she was coming out there to rub my back and ask me if I was doing all right. I thought she was going to act kind and belittle me. I hated that feeling. I liked her- I would never admit it but I did. I had wanted to talk to her all night; I just couldn’t find the courage. So, I just sat there, smoking my cigarette and trying to ignore her.

She sat down next to me. Right next to me. She didn’t stand on the step above me. She didn’t crouch down or just loom over me. She sat there, right next to me, shoulder to shoulder. All my worries and doubts left my mind. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to hold her soft, tiny hand in mine.

I switched the cigarette from my left hand to my right, taking a small drag in between. Then I reached above my ear and pulled down my last cigarette.

“You smoke cigarettes?” I held it out to her.

“More often than I’d like to admit,” she laughed.

I handed it to her.

We sat there, smoking in silence for a few moments.

“Yunno,” I started very slowly, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you all night.”

She smiled at me and a small giggle came out when she spoke, “Then why didn’t you?”

“Well, I am now.”

“Yeah, but would you have said anything if I hadn’t come out here?” She was still laughing as she said it.

I laughed, too. “I don’t know, honestly.”

I looked out at the sky. It was at the beautiful stage of dark blue the moment before it all goes black. It was a color that made you feel at peace. In a moment, it would be gone.

“You’re not like your brother,” she said.

“How?” I grinned.

“I don’t know, you just aren’t.” She smiled back.

I laughed as I finished my cigarette and put it out under my foot.

“He used to call me all the time, you know,” she giggled, “ he was probably just fucked up, but you know how he his.”

I laughed some more. “I heard it was the other way around.”

“Of course you did.” She raised her eyebrows sharply as she said it.

“So…”

“So, what?”

“So, which way was it?”

“Listen, you know how your brother is… I don’t know why you’d ever believe a word he says.”

“That’s my brother, I mean, he wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think.”

I didn’t want to say anything. My brother and I had a good relationship. We didn’t lie to each other. Still, I wanted to believe her as well.

“Forget about it.” She broke the silence.

“I agree,” I said with a smile. “Let’s drink.”

I reached my left hand down to my side and scooped up my whiskey.

***

“Why wouldn’t you fuck her? She’s a total babe.”

“She seems a little off, yunno.”

If my brother says she’s a little off, then she might be just right for me. You see, we weren’t so much best friends because we were alike but because we were brothers. It’s just always been that way. I don’t know, we’re foils to each other, but it works somehow. It’s lit.

My brother continued but my mind had drifted off. Off to her.

Her instagram was weird. I liked that. She posted a lot of pictures but only a few of herself. It was mostly her friends, I assumed they were friends, or those cool memes, not the funny ones but the classic movie ones. It was dope. She had a dark, vintage kind of aesthetic, like she had thought it out well but hadn’t really put too much effort into it. Maybe her aesthetic was just natural. Maybe she was that cool.

I followed her and she followed me back. I resisted liking any pictures, but I couldn’t help but go through them all. Now, as my brother talked about his latest and greatest night, I wandered back to her page.

She was like half-goth, half-snob, half- I don’t even know. She had a bit of a Mia Wallace chic. As far as I could tell from social media, her clothes were all black and white despite one jean jacket and she often wore shades. She kept it simple but her tattoos, piercings, and a pocket chain or multiple finger rings always added that bit of “extra-ness” that I liked.

She was bold but hot so it worked. She got over two hundred likes on every pic and had over a thousand followers. And she was only a sophomore in college. And she only followed 182 people. That shit made her more dope. And she didn’t even do that shitty follow and then unfollow thing that babes usually do. When you can have a poppin’ insta and still not care about it you’re doing something right in this life.

“Bro,” Keith was saying.

“I zoned out, bro, I’m not even gonna lie.”

Keith laughed and shook his head. “She snapped like the whole crew but I don’t think anybody replied after a while.”

I looked up. Most of the time I just laughed at matters like these, but she was my girl now, well, in my head. I was curious. I couldn’t help it.

“The whole crew like you, Tommy, Crispy- the whole crew? Or like you, Tommy, Crispy, Jordan, Marco-”

“Tommy, Crispy, me- not the whole crew, just the OG crew,” Keith laughed.

“Maybe not Crispy, but me and Tommy for sure. And me and her never even really spoke- we just had a class together or something. Tommy’s the one who used to flirt with her.”

Keith was chuckling as he spoke. “She’s a grade below you, bro, she’s a sophomore. I can’t fuck around with sophomores anymore, I’m a senior.”

I laughed. “This ain’t high school, brother. I ain’t hearing that.”

He smiled.

“Besides,” I went on, “you messed around with that Angelina girl, that Mexican girl- she’s a freshman.”

Keith’s chuckle was replaced with a stupid grin. It made me laugh even harder. We were both laughing. He broke through his own laughter.

“She had that ass, though!”

We were both howling at this point. She did, too.

“And she’s not Mexican- she’s like, Cuban or something.”

I shrugged and smiled. “I could never get a girl like that.”

I was laughing as I said what was actually a serious sentiment.

It was true. Angelina was a popular sorority girl. Popular sorority girls didn’t go for me. I had to aim my attention at the artsy, alternative girls, but hey, I wasn’t complaining.

“You get those grunge-princess girls,” Keith laughed.

“Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it,” I cackled back.

“I have tried it.”

“Who? When?”

Keith’s stupid grin made another surprise appearance. “Jennifer.”

I lost my shit. “Jennifer! Jennifer?”

I pursed my lips together and emitted a high, squeaky frequency that mocked Jennifer’s shrill voice.

I returned to my voice, “Get the fuck outta here!”

We laughed some more.

“She was kinda goth, bro, she was- she was different.”

“She was Alpha Chi, wasn’t she?”

“Alpha Phi.”

“That’s less grungy. That’s worse, Alpha Chi had a little-,” I emphasized how little with my fingers, “a little ‘punk’ in ‘em.”

I got ‘serious.’

“Alpha Phi was-” I pushed my nose up against my face to portray “snoody.”

“Oh, c’mon, she wore all black-”

“That’s it! All black- so, what, Johnny Cash was a goth? Hey everybody,” I went into a Johnny Cash impression, “I’m gonna finish this song as soon as I slit my wrist-” I went back out of it, “headass.”

Keith exploded with laughter, which in turn had me losing it.

Keith was unimpressed with impression, though my bet would be that he just wanted an excuse to do his own. “I’m gonna finish this song as soon as I tie my Doctor Marten boot.” His impression was much better. And funnier. And his joke was funnier.

“I’m gonna finish this song as soon as I finish this Anime.”

He one-upped me again:

“I’m gonna finish this song as soon as I finish telling you how good Pulp Fiction is.”

“For the thousandth time!”

I continued it, “And next, Heathers!”

We died.

I did love that movie, though. I loved both of those movies.

After the laughter concluded, my mind jumped back to that girl and my phone screen jumped back to her instagram.

I clicked on a picture of her out on the town with a friend. She had on a black, leather skirt and a white, cropped blouse. It was long-sleeve but had the shoulders cut out. It was weird, but I liked it. Underneath her skirt she had on those fishnets with the rips in them. So edgy. So sexy. And lastly- black boots, but not Dr. Martens. No, my good friend, a deviance from the norm. It was that which caught my eye most. No Dr. Martens. Just regular-old, not regular black boots.

I held the phone up to my brother’s face.

“She is sexy, though, bro,” he said.

“Yeah, but she’s a little off, I’m telling you.”

“I’m dm’ing her.”

“Shut up.”

I slid up on her story, a mirror selfie with a big, pink heart emoji covering half of it.

Yet I couldn’t think of anything to say.

***

She smiled over at me and the whole world lit up.

I sat up and looked into her eyes. She was gorgeous. She was everything I never knew that I wanted. And that made it all so much better.

It was like I didn’t exist anymore and I had never been happier.

But the concept of time baffled me. When I was with her, the time flew by; there was never enough. When I was away from her, I was convinced I had never been happier, but I was really only happy when I was with her, and it was never enough. The touch of her hand was electric. Her skin was soft and her lips were full. Her eyes were beyond anything I had ever imagined. I could forget the world when I looked into those big, beautiful eyes.

She did nothing to try to stand out, she just did. She did to me. And I really think I loved her, even if love doesn’t really exist. Whatever I felt, it was so beautiful it caught me off guard. I longed for more of it. More beauty, more love, more life, more her.

Neither of us were saying anything. We were just looking at each other. I hoped she felt the way I felt. I wanted her to feel it more than I wanted to feel it. To love is one thing, but to be loved is beyond compare. I’d never had a girl care for me that wasn’t my mom. Not before her. I’d had a number of girls but nothing that ever lasted or made any case for “true love.”

“I used to come down here alone,” she broke the silence. “I told myself I’d never bring anybody here.”

I couldn’t contain my happiness. I scooted over to her swiftly and wrapped her up in my arms. I wish I could have held her there forever.

“I love the way you feel,” I whispered.

She loosened her grip and looked at my face.

“You’re smiling.” She wasn’t when she said it. “I’ve never seen you smile… Not for real.”

I was still smiling, and it was something I had never done. I had grinned on occasion, I had chuckled, and I could even howl with laughter, but before her, I had never just smiled.

***

“I’m just tired of waking up everyday and feeling like I wanna die. Yunno, I used to always just wish I was dead- or just, yunno, never born.”

I paused and took a breath. She let me breathe.

“Now, it’s like, everyday. It’s constant- just wanting to die.”

An immediate sense of guilt came over me as I finished the thought.

She wasn’t even mine anymore. Had I become that guy that would say anything to get what I wanted? It was true, though, but maybe nobody ever needed to know it. Maybe it was a burden I should have always carried by myself. But now it was too late.

“I can’t be here for you anymore.”

The words stung. I was in pain but it felt like I deserved it. I was sharing things I never should have shared. I deserved to be let down. I was asking too much of her. And I was the one who had ended things with her initially. Now here I was, looking to her for solace.

I laughed through the phone, just loud enough so she could hear it.

“I know, I just-” I couldn’t find the words.

It was an old feeling that hit me just then. Loss of words. I was forever at a loss of words. The words I did say were wrong, the words I never said I should have, and the words I needed never existed.

“I missed you. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

It was true, but it was more an attempt to escape the conversation all together. Maybe I would run into her down the road and I could just pretend like I was really fucked up and didn’t even remember talking to her on the phone. She would believe it; it happened all the time when we were in college.

“Are you drunk right now?”

“I’m just saying, you can do better,” I sang out in my best falsetto, hoping to distract her with a joke.

We both laughed. I missed her laugh. I missed her smile. I really did miss her. She probably missed me, too. But we were history now, and sometimes, even if there’s no reason for you to be apart from someone, life keeps you that way.

“And I’ll start hating, only if you make me!”

We sang it together in perfect unison.

***

She always did that. She always got too high and then super-anxious and then I had to go pick her up and then she would somehow find a way to get mad at me. It was stupid. I used to think she was so cool, so perfect. Then you get to know someone. Then you start to love someone. Then you see who they really are. She wasn’t that cool, edgy, bad bitch I’d always wanted. She was a child, always rationalizing and making excuses- always playing the victim.

But who am I kidding? I wasn’t any better. I was just too fucked up on pills and weed to know the difference. She probably thought the same things about me- I wasn’t that cool, mysterious, half-hippie people thought I was. I wasn’t always high and chill or drunk and funny. I was given to bizarre fits of silence and exclusion and self-loathing. I wasn’t ever physically aggressive but my presence became threatening to many. My demons walked around with me and we could disappear into the night at anytime. Sometimes I woke up in places I didn’t remember being in. I’d heard the stories.

I could be apathetic. So apathetic. Often that was worse for people than anger and hatred. A person could get a sense of fulfillment from another “so madly in love” with them that they will do and say anything to be with them, but how many people can deal with someone who is so unmoved it appears they don’t care at all?

I pulled up to the house, a frat house that I’d partied in before but couldn’t really remember, and waited. I tried to call her but no one answered. She was probably fucking somebody, who knows? Maybe she was on her way out and one of the guys offered her some coke. “I couldn’t turn that down,” she would say to me. “What do you want me to do- walk away from free coke?”

She would blame me, I knew she would. Maybe I should’ve just stopped taking those late night calls. Maybe I should’ve broken things off, but I just couldn’t. That tension, that unpredictability- I needed that. I needed to be chasing, and then in moments, when she found some peace- then I made her chase me.

I sat there for another ten minutes, quickly getting impatient and annoyed, but I knew I would hold it all in. I would stay silent and chill and that silence would push her to talk and to blame me, even when I didn’t get mad at her for making me wait. Then the next day she would blame the coke for making her blame me. My silence would remain and the less I said the more angry she would become. Then she would be mad at me again and things would be back to normal. Then we’d get high and fuck and fuck and fuck until we couldn’t anymore. Then we’d sleep.

***

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” she was saying.

But there wasn’t any music playing. No violins, no soundscape.

If it’s miles away, if it’s a memory, if it’s just my imagination then at least it’s something I got to feel. At least it’s something I got to remember.

I can hear her voice saying it but I don’t know if it really happened.

Is she somewhere out there thinking the same thing?

Is it because of the chemicals in my body or the substance in my brain?

Is it because Cupid shot me with an arrow or is it just because I’ve always been so lonely?

Maybe it was me saying it, not her. But not aloud, never aloud. I couldn’t even find the courage to speak. I didn’t respect myself enough. I knew I wasn’t good enough for her. But I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe that’s what made me perfect for her.

“Helloooo.”

It was her voice. Her sweet, beautiful, soft voice.

Then it was silence. I didn’t even breathe.

I waited for a sigh or for that snide, “Ok, I’m hanging up” remark where the words get louder and louder until that final ‘p’ in “up.”

Silence.

Maybe she knew it was me. My face must have been bright red.

My subconscious outraced the un-useful part of my brain, which was the part I was allowed access to.

My finger pressed the red button. Once wasn’t enough. I must have pressed too hard.

The second time was the charm.

I felt so embarrassed, which was strange because I never got embarrassed. Feeling embarrassed and realizing it made me more embarrassed. I hated myself at that moment. I guess I hated myself at most moments.

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I made my way out of the room, down the short, narrow hallway and into the old kitchen. I walked over to the refrigerator and grabbed one of the many bottles of dark liquor we had stored in there. Dark liquor for us and two bottles of vodka for the ladies. I grinned.

My left hand automatically shot into my pocket and withdrew two white pills. Down the hatch they went. Like clockwork.

Then it was back to business. I downed as much whiskey as I could and then I picked up the phone again.

I called her. And then I waited.

“You better speak this time!”

“It’s me.”

Silence.

“What do you want?”

Before I could even start she jumped back in.

“You know what, I can’t deal with your emotional ass right now.”

She hung up.

Emotions and substances hit all at once.

Then I started floating away.

I liked floating away.

***

I always thought I’d just run into her again somewhere. I mean, even though there were over 15,000 people at our college, I always just thought I’d run into her again.

But if love’s real it’s not like in the movies. The movies show you want they want to show you, or what they choose to show you. Life shows you everything. Your dreams, your imagination, your physical body, your interpretation of life and everything going on around you, every morning you wake up, every night you go to sleep, every text you send and receive, every word you speak, every thought and memory, it all goes into what makes you you and what makes your life a life. You add all that to another life, and the way you interpret that life versus the way that life interprets you and itself and you’ve got a relationship. That’s a lot.

***

Keith always liked to be in the driver’s seat no matter what the situation. Even when he was ten drinks past the legal limit or a couple blunts in, he would always grab the keys and head to the left side of the car.

I had come to think it was a way of asserting his dominance, his manliness over people, but there wasn’t much to my theory. Besides, it wasn’t something I wanted to think, it was just something I happened to think.

“Spark it up.”

“In here?”

“Yeah, fuck it.”

I did as he told me to.

“There’s nothing like being high in a car, I swear to god.”

Keith was one of those people that always said things like that:

“Pizza is the best thing ever invented!”

“Nothing better than having a few beers with the boys!”

“Nothing beats getting head in a theatre!”

“Step Brothers is hands-down the greatest movie ever!”

It was constant. Anything he enjoyed was the best thing ever. Keith was just like that. That’s why people liked him so much. He was a very likable guy. And he was my brother.

The streetlights became brighter as we drove. The sky seemed to go on forever. The music sounded sweeter. Everything became lighter.

Then we pulled up to the house.

“Let’s fuck it up!”

Keith was always in the mood to fuck it up. Every party we went to, we fucked it up. People loved that. They loved having us because they knew things wouldn’t get awkward. Keith was that guy, and I was that guy’s little brother. When we pulled up to a party it was showtime.

***

She was lying there, naked, a blanket tossed over her, smoking a blunt. She was in a completely natural state- no make-up, no clothes, nowhere to be. She just was.

She didn’t even look up at me. She liked being admired. She liked knowing she was the only thing in the world I could possibly be thinking of. But I wasn’t thinking of her anymore. And maybe she knew it. Maybe that’s why she kept coming back to me. Maybe that’s why we kept coming back to each other.

Neither of us spoke. The silence that dangles over your head, that fills the room and steals your breath- it was everywhere. It was just her and me and space and time and nothingness. I looked into her eyes and my mind raced through an infinite landscape of shapes and figures. It was too fast for me to recognize anything or anyone. Her eyes were deeper than the ocean and brighter than the stars. There was so much there.

It could have been 30 seconds, I don’t know. It may have been hours- days even. It was an eternity and an instant. Life flashing before your eyes is simply what you call it. It’s nothing but lights and pictures. All that’s forgotten is gone and all that comes back had never left.

I walked over to her. I took my spot next to her. I kissed the side of her forehead gently. I only wanted her when she didn’t want me and she only wanted me when I didn’t want her. The balance of love comes as an imbalance and the joy of romance is a constant reach. When you show all your cards you lose the one you love. One must constantly be chasing love to feel anything at all- and even those feelings are just the wind in your face. When you stop moving you stop feeling.

Her hand to mine, her lips to my shoulder and a blunt to the face. Does it multiply the confusion or does this smoke relieve the confusion?

A thought of death. The great silence. A thought of life. Was it an effort or an illusion? Was it I who did these things to my mind or was it my mind- or dare I say- someone else’s- that had done these things to me?

Questions and answers hang in that imbalance that is often confused as a natural equilibrium. For one there should be the other but for neither is there any hope beyond what is already beyond.

Our bodies could become one but our minds could not. Only illusion was our friend in our deepest moments of passion. Only agony could produce so great a passion. To lose hate was to lose love. To be apathetic is to be tired, not hopeless, for one mind is never without hope. To breathe is to hope, to give up is to hope and to die is to- well, I haven’t done that yet.

***

Keith made the rounds with his whiskey glass in his left hand. He always walked around parties with a glass in his left hand. It had become his thing. If you saw Keith you saw that glass- liquid jumping around from side to side, yet, somehow, never spilling over. No, Keith never spilled a drink. Never. It was likely because he wouldn’t care if he did. You see, it is the one who tries who fails. Keith never seemed to try.

Life came to Keith, not the other way around. Keith never seemed to want anything that badly, it seemed that things wanted Keith. And when they came for him they found a pair of open, welcoming arms. Who could have known what it was that Keith wanted out of life? It was never, “I want to go to _____,” but rather, “Let’s go to _____!” Keith was a man of action. His words were actions, his body was always moving.

That night was no different. He laughed, he danced, he did shots, and he didn’t slow down for a second. It was a spectacle, watching that man move around a party. And that night I was really high and in one of my observational moods. I refused half the drinks offered to me while my mind became enchanted by loud 808s. Then I watched Keith. In between the blur of movement and distorted sounds, I watched my older brother do something extraordinary. He brought people together. He broke down the barriers of awkwardness with the strength of a battering ram. He made light of the dark and gave people something to talk about for weeks, months, oh, hell, years to come.

And the whole time I wondered if somewhere deep down in his chest there was a tightness. Sometime, somewhere, there must have been a moment when the lights went off and the silence overcame, and Keith felt that sting of the great beyond pulling him down. We had talked about a void before but it was impossible to get too serious with Keith. It was probably for the best but I couldn’t help but wonder.

“MORE SHOTS!”

I heard his voice coming from outside. I strutted past the Christmas lights and out into the night air, which reeked of anything you would expect from a college party. Keith was doing more shots. He was only beginning. I grinned. Then I laughed. Then I breathed and laughed again.

I was holding a blunt in my left hand. It was halfway gone. I hadn’t even noticed. I laughed again before taking a nice, long hit.

***

I’m used to waking up in stiffness and pain. My head feels like a lead weight while my body feels numb. I lay there like a corpse, unable to move, unable to process a thought. Most of the time I am too frightened by the night’s dreams to get up with zest and attack the day with joy. I live in a darkness, my mind wraps itself in a fog. All is gray.

However, today is different. Today I get to live in the world I must belong in. Today is the first morning of a coastal vacation. I should just move to the coast but I don’t have what it takes to make my own decisions and figure out this life thing myself.

I wake up to moderately loud music and my eyes focus themselves to what has likely been in front of my face for a good time. It is Keith, dancing and swaying slowly, thoroughly enjoying himself. I laugh. I actually feel good. How did I stray so far from this? Where did I go wrong?

I go to check my phone but Keith smacks my hand. “Phones off, remember?” He grins as the dance continues.

“I can’t believe I have to share a room with your dumb-ass,” I laugh.

Keith just keeps dancing and smiling. I notice a half empty glass in his left hand. It’s probably whiskey with honey. It’s his “healthy” morning drink. I prefer to wake and bake. My bed leaps aside from under me and I am onto the floor. My body fights to get up for a second but my mind has become so relaxed it gives up. And I am happy. I could’ve laid on that floor forever.

Keith was ready for the day to begin, but he was never in a rush. This was another quality that made him quite popular. He never rushed and he never made a fuss about getting anywhere. Nothing was too important to him. And it wasn’t as if his priorities were mixed up; he was late when he was late, there was nothing more to it.

Suddenly, the adjoining door bursts open and, dancing like fools with drink in hand, in comes Tommy and Crispy. The three start circling around me as I lie on the floor, dancing still and making a ruckus.

OK, ok, I’m getting up…

The three of them were excited and already tipsy as we wandered down the street to the beach. I was on my cool-shit, blunt in hand, strolling casually. Dope, vintage-looking cars went by. The street was very chic. Beautiful girls and tall, golden men passed us by. I felt like I was in a Tarantino movie. I liked it. This place was my style.

Tommy carried the cooler with Crispy and Keith taking turns giving him shots of their drinks as his hands were full. They never cared to look like idiots and I liked that. They were weird but it wasn’t a show and they never changed. I respect that. However, they were all good-looking guys so being weird made them funny to people more than weird.

I was always the off one in the group but every group needs some different personalities. It adds to the dynamic; it makes it more fun. In our group, Tommy was the lead (and the oldest), Crispy was the fuckboy, Keith was the wild(est), out-going one, and I was the off one, which made some people like me less but often just made people like the group dynamic even more.

Tommy being the lead didn’t mean he had authority over us, it actually meant he was the planner of the group. He just told us where the party was at or where we would be going. It really just meant he had more responsibility but he liked it that way because he was the only one in the group who cared about stuff like that. Needless to say, it worked out for all of us. Keith, Crispy, and I didn’t care where we ended up. You just knew we were going to fuck it up wherever it was.

The beach, though, we came to this beach to chill, maybe meet some girls, who knows? But my mind was still on one girl, and I couldn’t get her out of my head. She had invaded and occupied my mind like it was Poland. The beach should have been enough to clear my head but it wasn’t. Nothing ever was. She was a trap I had walked myself right into.

But I wasn’t mad. It happens. Sometimes in life you just have to go with your gut. Even if it leads you astray, is there really a right way? Sometimes you just must have that girl. Just to know, just to feel that feeling. No darkness can strip away how it felt to first look into her eyes or to hold her close. It wasn’t time that had dragged us apart, it was distance. Not physical distance, it was that distance that looms there, unforgiving, that you never notice until it’s too late. And it was always there and it always will be there. No pill, no drink, no blunt can ever remove that distance. Between “Me” and every human, and every object, and every natural occurrence, be as it may, there is a divide. That distance will keep me from ever experiencing anything beyond the touch of illusion. And that can never last more than mere moments.

Now I live for those mere moments-

“Hey, JC, I got you that shit you asked for.” Crispy was smiling at me, his hand reaching into his swim shorts pocket.

I grinned back. “Let me get that hoe.”

He pulled out a small bag full of little white pills.

“These are 15 mg, so take two or three of them at a time with some weed and drink and you’ll be totally zooted.” Crispy laughed and I laughed, too. I handed him $20, a steal for so many pills. Crispy was the plug for the pills, and he made bank off that in school.

I needed this. These little white pills were the gateway to a clear mind. They took me to some other place and that’s why I liked them so much. I don’t know where it was, but all these nostalgic feelings would gather in my stomach, and my head would become an island, nothing but sand and water, and my limbs and face would be warm.

I popped two right away and finished my blunt. Then I started drinking. Then I started floating away.

***

As an individual, you are the one that lives within your life. People will tell you, “it’s not that bad,” or, “you should be thankful,” but there’s nothing to really compare your life with. You’re the only one feeling what you are feeling. Nobody else feels that. So when it’s bad, it’s bad and you’re alone. You can try to relate, or doctors and scientists can say with biological reason that you’re feeling something that’s been felt before, but when you’re lying down at night staring up at the ceiling, there’s no one else inside your head but you. You are forever alone. Only a lie can keep us together.

“It’s not that bad.”

That is what they will continue to tell you. But maybe it’s worse. Maybe that endless gray rules your brain and no matter how hard you try to fit into the rules of society you never will. Maybe you can’t. But the masses will never accept that. You must fit in. It must be your own stubbornness, your own laziness, that distracts you from being a contributing member of society.

However, maybe it is not. Maybe it is the pain, the agony, you feel. Maybe what you feel is more than they will ever understand. And you’re not judging them. You’re just feeling. And you can’t feel any other way, no matter how hard you try.

***

“You’re smiling again.” She was smiling over at me.

I looked up from my ice cream and met her eyes. They were so beautiful.

“Ice cream, you know, might be the only good thing in this life.”

She laughed and almost choked on hers. “God, I almost died,” She exclaimed. She launched her spoon at me.

“What was that for?” I was laughing.

“For making me almost die, you asshole.”

Then we were laughing together. She looked down again, “You’re so weird.”

I loved it when she said stuff like that. And I loved it whenever she laughed. It was so cute, her little giggle. It made my stomach feel warm as it flipped around in my body. If only I could capture one of those mere moments. If only I could feel that forever.

“What’s on your mind?” The mood suddenly changed. Her voice had dropped to a low hum. Her eyes were squinting at me. She was so serious.

I looked back down at my ice cream and then back up again. I moved my spoon up to my mouth.

She smiled again. “What?”

I grinned back.

“What?” She was serious again. “Really, really.”

I looked back down and then back up. I looked over to my side but I don’t know what I was looking at. Sometimes my head moves but it’s only to conceal that my brain is working in a new direction, and my eyes have gone dim. There’s light and movement but the only thing I can see is the thoughts emerging from that gray fog that encapsulates my every motion.

“I’m thinking about ice cream.”

She laughed and told me how much she hated me but then she was serious again.

“I’m serious, too” I laughed.

“I can tell when you’re lying,” she said sharply. “I don’t know, I think you’re a good liar because nothing ever changes in your face or even your mannerisms- god knows you’re always twitchy-”

I interrupted her, half-jokingly but also seizing a moment to change the topic. “Twitchy!?” Before I even said it my left hand was yanking at my scraggly hair.

I laughed and let out a sigh, “Yeah, I guess I can’t argue with that.”

She became still. She walked over to the trash can and tossed her cone. She glared back at me and then walked away.

I was confused, however, I remained still. I watched her walk away. We hadn’t drove here so I wasn’t worried about her having to walk for too long, but I considered whether I should go after her. No, it was better to let her go. I could call her later or text her. I didn’t know what was wrong. I mean, maybe I did, but I couldn’t admit it, not even to myself.

I had never seen her do anything like that before. Things had been going so well between us.

***

A spark. An electric touch. A bolt of lightning.

Isn’t that what we’re all waiting for?

An old car coming down an old road at a furious pace, blowing past us and into that wonderful, unforgiving darkness of night.

There’s a beam of light that shoots through the window and it wakes us up but only for a moment before consciousness is gone and the gray has returned.

Evacuate your mind to safety! What does it mean to love freely, let alone live freely?

A shadowy figure waits out by that streetlamp. He’s smoking a cigarette all cool-like. It’s like the cover of Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Young Lovers.

An empress emerges from the alley, a dog on a leash by her side and only a small step in front of her.

A gun is pointed to my head.

***

Three white pills down the hatch and a blunt in hand. I felt good again. Finally.

I turned around to Keith, who was standing there like a statue, a blank look on his face. “You’re still taking those?” He emitted quietly. His face remained unchanged, which was more than bizarre for the animated Keith.

I shrugged and went to find a place on the couch. Crispy was on the other end watching cartoons. He was laughing out loud.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Suddenly Keith was screaming.

I guess I thought he was talking to Crispy. We were both startled. Tommy lumbered down the stairs, ready to break up a fight, or maybe just jump in on one. “What’s going on, fellas?”

“None of your fuckin’ business,” Keith was hot. He was animated again, but not in the usual excited fashion. He was as angry as I’d ever seen him. Maybe angrier. I’d seen Keith get angry during fights at the playground, and when he’d get technical fouls, and once in a heated bout with Dad, but never like this.

“If it’s under this roof, if it’s one of my brothers, it’s my fucking business!” Tommy could get pretty gung-ho when he became flustered. He liked to think of the four of us as brothers. I guess we kind of were, but for Tommy, the only only-child of us four, it made sense that this bond went even deeper for him.

“I’m talking to you, you stupid motherfucker!”

Keith was staring me daggers, even pointing. I don’t think I’d ever seen him point before. I glanced over to see Jerry escape Tom’s wrath on the TV; it didn’t seem that I could do the same with Keith.

“About what?”

“You know- you fuckin’ know!”

He was angry but deep down I knew why. He really cared for me. I was blood. I was his younger sibling. That goes deep. No matter how much you hate each other at times, that bond never goes away. An older sibling will always feel a bit of responsibility for the welfare of a younger sibling. Maybe it’s honesty, maybe it’s insecurity. Maybe I’ll never know.

I chose to keep playing dumb, convincing myself I didn’t know what he was talking about. I would rather him physically hurt me than get into this argument. “Just say it.”

He didn’t. He turned cold and stormed out into the breaking morning light. Crispy shrugged. Tommy tried to assess the situation but we were silent. Our attention had turned back to cartoons. Crispy let out a half-sigh, half-giggle as Jerry once again out-maneuvered the desperate cat. I started laughing.

I could feel that beautiful numbness overtaking my aching body. I loved being so numb. I loved floating away and into the atmosphere where I was always alone, and no one could ever reach me. You could talk to me, you could even touch me, and maybe my body would respond, maybe my lips would form a sentence- but make no mistake, my mind would be somewhere else, somewhere peaceful, somewhere far, far away.

***

Crystal blue waves slide up and down the sandy shore. A big, yellow sun has turned to orange as it makes its way down into the valley of darkness. The sky is art. From a dark blue to a faded orange, one can only enjoy the tiny moment as it lasts. Beauty can only persist for minutes if it is to remain beautiful. It is in the hours, the days, the years when beauty is gone and the mundane returns that beauty earns its name.

Without pain there is no joy.

I must constantly remind myself of this.

But the pain is the status quo. The pain always returns. That sadness will always linger in the depths of the stomach as long as that pain returns. And return it does, without question. Without exception. Pain has made itself home in the heart and mind of man. The reaching goes on; life is a constant reaching.

Maybe that’s where I have gone astray. I no longer know what it is I am reaching for. What is it that I want?

The joy leaves with the setting sun and all is dark once again. The pain has staked its claim; Pain has gotten its vengeance.

The moon shows itself brightly and once again I am reminded of the distance between myself and the reality I find myself lost in. So much distance. No matter how much ground the feet tread there is no end in sight. There is no light at the end of this tunnel, only another tunnel. The end will be darkness, not light. The end will be Pain.

“JC!”

I heard Crispy’s voice behind me. I turned back to see him just a foot away.

“Damn, you going deaf or something? I’ve been calling your name for like an hour. What’re you doing out here all alone?”

I laughed. “My bad, I’m just zoned.”

“You always zoned,” he laughed.

“You’re one to talk.”

He laughed again. “Cos I be zooted.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. I knew what that meant. I started to stand up.

“Keith met some people at that little bar,” a wide grin shone on Crispy’s face, “It’s a party up the street, apparently it’s gonna be dumb lit.”

I grinned back. “Fuck, let’s get it.”

***

A moment is the strangest thing. A moment here, a moment there; where did it get you to?

The last moment I was reaching for her hand.

The last moment I was holding her hand.

That last moment she was walking out the door.

The last moment she was kissing me goodbye.

It’s strange. A moment. What’s it all adding up to? I mean, what’s every moment building up to? Another moment? Try to capture it, I dare you. It’s impossible.

A moment in the blink of an eye.

An instance.

It doesn’t make it any less real.

Or less significant.

I wish she would hold me the way she used to.

She would be lying there, still and cold, in the corner of the house. When I would wrap myself up in her arms she would look into my eyes like she was taking her last breath. I know it’s presumptuous of me, but it was undeniable. Now I wonder if it was all an act.

Now she just looks at me like we’re both dying.

We are both dying. She’s cold and I’m colder. Our eyes are dim. Our fingers are creased. There’s a blanket of false serenity in the place of true anxiety. Fear has given way to darkness and darkness to passionless, meaningless life. We can’t give ourselves meaning anymore, we’re past the false pretenses that we can find love and live happily. We’re past the lies and deceit. We know life only ends in darkness.

***

I want things to happen before I know what they are. I want to wake up three years down the road in a place I’ve never seen, surrounded by people I’ve never met. But I want to know them, I just don’t want to put in the effort it takes to get to know them. I want things to come to me; I never want to leave my bed.

If I knew death was just everything going black I would sit in the garage with the door closed and turn the car on while listening to Angel Olsen’s new record. Or maybe I still wouldn’t have the guts. I’m a pussy. I’m pathetic, a failure, a miserable son of a bitch. I never deserved life, or maybe I do deserve life because life is horrible and so am I. Maybe that fear of death is my punishment for being the fuck-up that I am. Maybe I’ll just fear death and fear life and fear everything all together for 40 more years and then while I’m still paralyzed with fear I’ll fall down the stairs, clinging to a life I hated, watching my clock tick-tock, tick-tock until life is no more.

I want things to be out of my hands. I don’t want to accept responsibility for someone else’s sadness. I want to go back in time and die before I can cause this harm to my family and friends. If only I could have seen what I would become. If there was a God he should’ve spared us all.

Two more pills, two more swigs of whiskey. I could barely see. Everything was coming in and out of focus like an old movie gone awry. Lights were blinding and darkness was unsettling. Another pill, then another. Make it all go away, please. Make that aching go away. Make me nothing, make me numb. Make me float down the river and look up to a sky of tangerine. Make it all go away. Make me all go away…

***

“I never know what’s on your mind.” She was grinning, but then her eyes fell back to the ground. “I feel like I don’t even know you, really.”

I watched her watch the ground under her. I tried to feel what she was feeling. I felt resentment. I felt apathy and pain and boredom. I felt like she always needed more than I could be.

“Look at me.”

Our eyes met.

I grinned at her. “You know me. Right now, right here, when you look at me… you know everything about me.”

I tried to hold the stare but my eyes were distracted by something changing in the distance. It was a movement of shape and size, not color. Something shifted in the atmosphere but I must have missed it.

“I don’t know myself, sometimes.” I grinned back at her.

She smiled back. “I just wanna know you; I just wanna know…”

She stopped for a minute. She made a sweet, little noise and gritted her teeth, and her hands came up to her face. It was so beautiful, what she did, but I can’t even find the right way to describe it. I wish I could, but I can’t; I’m at a loss. The words aren’t there.

“I wanna know what you think about.”

“About you?”

“Yeah- no, about everything.”

“Everything?”

I turned away. My eyes melted into the sky, but I wasn’t recognizing a physical world. I was lost in the abstract. I took my time.

“I think all the time, just about stupid shit, death and what not.”

She shook her head and grinned. “That’s it? Such a cute, little e-boy, ‘I think about death,’” she was mocking me. Her impression was really funny. I laughed a little. Then a lot. I loved it when she made fun of me.

“You’ll never tell me,” she frowned.

I went like I was going to whisper some soft sentiment into her ear. Then I licked it.

Then the joking and laughter came back but my mind was somewhere else. My mind was always slipping back into that gray. I was saying things and hearing things but I wasn’t. My body was there, but I wasn’t. What makes me Me?

***

I could find the most beautiful, poetic words to describe her: her eyes are the northern lights, her kiss, sweet as honey, but nothing will compare to the feeling. The feeling. Where does that feeling lie? In my gut, in my physical body, or is it a quick burst into the stars and the universes parallel? Where do I feel these things that are so heavy?

She makes me feel as if I do have a reason to live. And that scares me the most. To live I will need to take responsibility. I will need to build. I will need to cherish. I will need to take life seriously, my own actions and those of others. How can this be?

The garden winds into a place beyond city where the feeling of being lost is comforting. I don’t want to know anymore. I don’t want to think. I only want to feel.

“Don’t get too far behind.”

I can’t help but lag back a step. I love to watch her move her way through the world. She knows exactly where she is going. She has the strength of 12,000 men and doesn’t need to lift a finger to prove it. It’s in her gentleness, her passion. She feels greatly and she carries her burdens around as if they are trophies. She’s been through it and she’ll continue to go through it and she won’t let it pull her down. She will die with a smile plastered across her face.

If only I could admire her forever without the selfish thoughts that resurge and re-occupy my brain’s space.

I need her. Too much. And now I am concerned with my well-being. Should she get bored with me, I will be left for dead. I can’t manipulate her to stay; she will go where the wind will take her. I will be left for dead. Who is to blame? I am to blame. I should’ve walked away from her the second I loved her. I should have turned around when I became overwhelmed by her touch. And now it’s more than her touch. It’s her spirit. It’s her resilience.

She keeps getting further and further ahead of me now.

I smile as I watch her move through the woods.

***

Don’t you feel that weight on your shoulders? Don’t you feel that intense pressure in the pit of your stomach? The weight of every generation, of every man to ever let loose a breath is on you. Every sin is yours, humankind is you. Every “atrocity” as well as every “advancement,” every “loss” and every “victory,” you own it. It’s all yours. You are responsible for the world. You are the world.

***

I must be so fucking gone. More and more she talks to me as if I’m stupid and rather than fight it I enjoy it. I must be dead. I love the pain she puts me through. I love how she toys with my heart. I need the constant back and forth, it’s keeping me alive. How many times will we leave and come back before there’s nothing left?

It’s that constant- a train is coming. I should hop out on the tracks and let it do me in. I should open the car door up right now and do it. What do I have to lose? What if I did it and then everything just went black and all this pain and misery was gone? What am I waiting for? What is it I’m building up to? What is it I want?

Done it all, I’ve done it all by now. What else can I feel that’s not a part of the same old cycle? Love, misery, joy… What else can I feel?

I’ve tried the drugs, damn near all of them by now. What can get me high like she used to? What can make me soar on the wings of an eagle? What’s left in this world? Where else can I step? What can I do living if I can’t conquer death?

***

I’m killing myself just to feel something but there’s nothing left. There’s a distance between the world and I but there’s a greater distance between the me I know and the me I am. Lost, dazed, confused, my soul is in agony. It doesn’t end or begin; it is eternal.

I hear the drums coming down the mountain, the end is near. There’s light and dark and a space, a small space, where they dance gaily together. Does the light feel good and the dark bad? Do they share sentiments? I reach for answers to find more questions. I limp slowly through the fire, taking the heat and pretending like nothing ever happened. I was destroyed long before you ever noticed it.

There’s a ringing in my ears that never stops. My eyes are always sore, my vision is blurry. My mind gets distracted and then distracted from that distraction and then again until I don’t even know where I am or what I am doing. What am I doing?

“JC!”

The ringing quieted for a second.

“JC!”

It came back louder.

“Wake up, sleepyhead!”

My eyes had been open.

I looked over.

She was staring at me, laying on her side, all cute-like. That’s a feeling I wish I could always have.

“I’m up, up and away,” I said softly. The words hurt my throat as they escaped the rough edges. Everything in my body was always so weary. I couldn’t help but want to run away but where could I go? Where was there to run? It struck me that changing locations couldn’t really change the way I felt inside. That darkness was inside me no matter what was outside.

“I could just lay here all day with you.” She giggled as she wrapped her warm body around mine. She held on tightly. I needed that touch.

“Last night was amazing.”

It really was. We dropped acid and had sex for what felt like forever. It was sex but it was more than sex. There’s nothing like sex; there’s nothing like sex with someone you cherish, but there’s nothing like sex with someone you cherish off acid.

“Both times I’ve dropped acid I feel like I’ve gone into a separate world,” she started. “I see things from my childhood and then from the future. I feel things from within and then from outside of me. I melt and then I re-form. And every second I lose something, but the more I lose the closer I get to the truth, you know? The less I know and the more I feel, the more nothing making sense all makes sense.”

I liked listening to her talk. She was so pretty and so were her words. Often I found myself getting lost in her eyes when she would talk, but then I would have to ask her to repeat herself because I really wanted to know what she was saying.

I was doing it just then. “Wait, say that again.” I giggled.

“Oh my god, you never listen to me!” She emphasized the “me” and let out a cute little sigh. “Ugh.”

“Nah, nah, nah, I just get lost- you’re so pretty.” It sounded like bullshit but it was true. I did get lost looking at her. She was so beautiful, so eloquent, so deep and so tough, and yet so fragile. I loved her. And she showed me love back. It was so beautiful. As a matter of fact, it was so pretty it made me sad. It was a bearable sadness, a good sadness, I might say, but a very deep and profound sadness at that.

She rolled her eyes. “I was saying…”

I wandered back into her deep, loving eyes, but quickly awakened to hear her voice above the echo of distant drumming in my ears.

“I don’t even know, I just, I love tripping but it was so much better with you. I love you, I love being with you. Ugh.”

She stopped and let out another sigh, a bigger one.

“I feel like I’m not enough for you.”

***

I had to let her go. I didn’t want to but I had to. I know now that I was holding on so tightly to something that didn’t exist. When I found out she was talking to him again I felt so many things I couldn’t even tell what was what. I knew I had to do what I had to do but I didn’t want to. I hated to. I hated making her feel bad but she didn’t care what I felt. The moment things had gotten boring she had sparked something up with him again. What did she gain? Was all the excitement worth it? Did she think I was too pathetic to ever let her go or was she just testing me to see if I would fight for her?

I wanted to fight for her, but I couldn’t. I had to let go. I needed her too much. I hated myself too much. I felt too much. I was lost and confused more than ever.

Two more pills down the hatch. More blunts, more booze.

We’re all so fucking lonely.

Have you ever just gone to a bar and watched people? I don’t recommend it. You have to get really drunk before you go. You have to get really high and really drunk. You have to do your drugs and spin in circles until you’re dizzy and it’s all lights and quick, sudden movements. It’s not a dance, it’s survival, a new kind of survival.

We’re all so fucking lonely.

***

We’re born and we die and everything in between is just an illusion.

***

Death comes for all of us. You can spend your whole life crying or your whole life laughing but it doesn’t really make a difference. You’re born, you laugh, you cry, then you die. There doesn’t seem to be any exception. You can believe in heaven if it makes you feel better about life. You can believe whatever you want. You can lie. Where’s any truth anyways?

I started to love it when she lied to me. I loved it when she hurt me. I loved it when I waited outside in the rain for her and she never showed up. I liked to feel worthless. That made it all so much better when she would pull me closer and kiss me and tell me she loved me. I was sick for her love. And she was sick for mine.

As soon as I pulled away she made a scene. Whenever I shrugged her off or ignored her she showed up to the house. She made a scene if necessary. Then we ended up back in bed. Then we went silent. Then she disappeared. Then I chased her. Then I got her back and then I walked away. Then she chased me. We couldn’t stop.

After an accidental overdose and a short stint in rehab I had gotten back on the pills quickly. I stopped, then relapsed, and stopped, then relapsed again before I had come to a point where I was just smoking weed to get by and sober everywhere else. I still craved the feeling of floating away that only those pills could give me but I was doing all right. Weed helped. A lot.

She was still on my mind. Everything about her drove me crazy. The sex was amazing but it was so much more than just sex. I had never met anyone remotely like her. She was unreal. She was better than any drug I’d ever hit. She was everything. I was alive for her and her only. I don’t think she knew how much I needed her. Maybe sometimes, but sometimes I just wasn’t present.

I wanted to die every time she walked away. I was nothing without her. Just a pathetic, lonely, nonchalant psychopath passing under the radar of society. If she knew how lonely and fucked up my head was she would have left me for good, right? Or maybe she liked it. Maybe we were both just so fucked up and so cool and everything was so confused.

***

It was the middle of the night when I found out she was talking to him again. I didn’t want to believe it. Suddenly, it all came back and it all made sense; even though my heart still fought to believe she was mine. I was too confused to believe anything. Everything was already so fucked up and hazy in my mind. How could a girl like her be true to me? What did I have to offer anyone? I was weird, strung out, and my dreams had all passed me by. I was good-looking, yes, but what else?

I’ll never forget what she texted him, that along with a picture she had sent me a week prior. Other texts and pictures were traded but that was the one that stuck with me. There was no way even my fucked up mind could come up with an excuse for her. It was over.

But I loved it as much as I hated it. I loved to feel that hurt, that betrayal. I loved that she could look me in the face a day earlier and tell me to trust her and tell me she loved me and only me and then go behind my back and lie. I loved that pain. I needed to feel worthless and alone. I needed her to remind me of that distance that stands between me and any meaningful interaction.

It’s everywhere, that distance. Always, and everywhere. There’s no escaping it. The drugs gave me moments of peace but ultimately they made my spiral quicker. I was done for. My will to live was fleeting. What could I even say to her? Could I have confronted her? Was there anything left to be said? She didn’t love me the way I loved her. She loved the drama, the back and forth, the attention. I wanted her and her only, forever. I knew I wasn’t easy to be with, I was very difficult, always trapped in my head, but I was honest. She hadn’t been.

Therefore, I got rid of everything that reminded me of her. I wanted to run away. I wanted to forget I ever loved her, and forget it meant so little to her. I thought of that guy she was texting; he must have been laughing at me. A guy that had supposedly made her life hell; a guy she had told me all these terrible things about. But now I knew it could all be lies. I had seen it. She could be dragging him around just like she was dragging me around.

I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe I could love and be loved. I knew we were both fucked up but I thought that had made us closer. I thought she felt what I felt, even between all the blurry nights, the drugs and the alcohol.

How could I be so wrong about somebody? How could I love someone even more every time they hurt me? How did she really feel? How could I ever know?

***

My eyes were wide as hell from all the medications. Keith was sitting directly across from me, his stare darting back and forth from me. I tried to make a joke, “At least the food here is better than McDonald’s.” It wasn’t.

He smiled but I could see he was choked up. It must have been hard to sit across from someone you’d known your whole life, and watch their life hanging in the balance. I tried to joke with him and he made attempts to joke back but it was futile. I told him there were cute girls here and I was doing all right with them. I told him I got time to myself to just read and write again. He said he was happy but I could see that he too was feeling that distance between us. Even between brothers and best friends alike, we lived in completely different worlds, and we had never been further apart than at that moment.

Our thirty-minutes was up but it felt like forever. Time usually moved very quickly when Keith and I were together, but not that day. Not that day.

Keith was dismissed along with the rest of the visitors and I and the rest of the patients were herded back to our halls. It was like being outside the world. The point was to make you feel less crazy but I had never felt more out of touch than in that hall. We were a small group of struggling people, being talked to and fed like toddlers, coddled to the point of condescension. Sadly, I knew that’s how I deserved to be treated: like a child, unaware and naive.

It was fucked up, but after a couple of days I started to kind of like being treated this way. I would wake up, go to group, go outside for a walk (as in, walk in a small circle) go to a few more groups and lunch, a few groups and then dinner, and then have free-time to read and write and go outside and get some air. Life was slow but busy. I was on so many meds that I was actually sleeping but I still wasn’t eating much. Life was strange, but my pain was lessened. I missed my family but I was slipping far, far away from society; it was a bit nice to be around people I didn’t know or who didn’t know me. I was isolated but alive.

“You enjoy seeing your family?” A short, stout man named Greg said to me before I could slip back into my room and continue my reading.

“It was nice,” I responded softly.

“You got someone coming almost every night, must be nice,” Greg hadn’t a single soul come visit him since I had been there.

“I’m a lucky guy,” I said. I tried to smile at him. Greg was so friendly. He was always trying to help everyone in the group. He had a good heart.

“I was supposed to have a visitor tonight but they messed up my paperwork,” he spat out. I knew it wasn’t true but I shook my head and let him know how sorry I was.

***

I miss being sad about things that are completely out of my control: the longing for something more, the aching for romantic love, the angst of eternal suffering, the void in space and time. Now I just miss my girl. I miss her body pressed against mine.

“JC, yo!” Keith was waving his hand in front of my face. He was smiling but it wasn’t the same as it used to be.

“You tryna do something tonight?”

I couldn’t make up my mind right away. The last couple of times I had gone out hadn’t ended too well. I would drink NyQuil with liquor, then smoke and sometimes mix energy drinks with whatever was in my cup. Instead of getting really bizarre and funny like I used to, I would just get really bizarre. Keith told me I was getting dark, yet he still wanted me to go out with him. He still loved the turn up but even he wasn’t the same.

Maybe it was because we were in a new town in a small apartment and barely knew anybody, but Keith wasn’t the same. He wasn’t dark like me, but he wasn’t his old self. He wasn’t the center of attention anymore. He had lost a part of himself. He was tired. Part of that must have been my fault and I hated myself for that.

I was tired of dragging down the beautiful people around me. I was tired of not being able to be strong and help the people I loved get through tough times. It was always people picking me up, then picking me up again. I was nothing but a weight, dragging people down to the depths of the ocean with me.

“Yo, yo, yo!”

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s fat pussy!”

“C’mon, let’s do something! You tryna hit Longworth’s?”

Keith kept trying but I was gone. I was beyond gone, my soul was removed from my body. Gently, my mind had slipped from my head and out into that great unknown. I was lost; I always had been and I always would be.

“Fuck it, man, I’ll brave it alone,” Keith chuckled as he grabbed his car keys. “You sure you cool here in la-la land?”

I tried a smile. His face wrenched as I looked up at him. So much distance, so much space. I was holding a glass cup but in a second it shattered softly on the ground. I barely reacted.

“You okay?” Keith made his way back into the kitchen.

“I’ll clean it up, sorry,” I tried to save it, “I just zoned out.” I tried to laugh when I said it but emitted only a small squeak. So gone, so far gone.

“Maybe we can just go get a pizza, catch the game, something like that,” Keith muttered. It was apparent he was going into his head. His eyes were glazed over. It was the same way he looked at me when I was in rehab. I hated it but it was all my fault. I wished I could go back to the way things used to be and reinvent myself but paranoia would have always gotten the best of me.

“Pizza sounds good, that I can do,” I said with a grin as I vacuumed up the last loose pieces of glass that I had missed with the broom. “What game’s on?”

***

She was giggling hysterically and rolling around on the bed. I’d never felt warmer inside. She was so cute. Her big, beautiful eyes lit up as the laughter subsided. She smiled at me and gave me a quick peck, then another. Quick kisses turned into sloppy, wet tongue kisses. I had never felt so in tune with another human. She was the only one for me, there was no way around it.

The cliches were true. She was my peace. When I was away from her my dreams became dark and my demons won my mindshare but she could make it all go away in an instance. I think I became too dependent on her. That was one of her biggest flaws, and only flaw that I could see, something out of her control; she was too lovable. People needed her energy, they needed her good vibes. She was fun, funny, exciting, clever, well-read, but down with the culture, too. She had some ghetto in her but she knew how to act.

“You’re disgusting, god, boys are so disgusting,” she was still laughing when she said it. “We need to get you some better self-care products.” She hated my 3-in-1 shower product.

We went back and forth with barbs in between kisses. I grabbed her and pulled her in close and tried to breathe. I couldn’t. She was intoxicating. I didn’t feel any distance at that moment. I had fallen in love. ’Twas a feeling I had never been close to before. I loved my family, I loved chicken, but this was a different kind of love: romantic love. What a feeling it was.

I was always paranoid, scared that it wouldn’t last and scared that at any minute she would walk away, but I couldn’t help but run to that feeling. No drug could compare, the saying was quite right, “love is the best drug.” She was my prescription, her love my addiction.

I started to feel things I had never felt as time went on. I felt jealous. I wanted her all to myself and I wanted myself all to her. I liked the idea of it being us against all the odds. We shared our darkest wishes, our sexual desires, and our hidden lusts. Then it went deeper than sex. We shared our views on life, our confusion, our opinions, our facts. We shared our dreams, our interests, our fears. What a feeling it was to love and be loved.

To touch her was to fly, to breathe her air was to live, to be away from her was to die. I was hers and she was mine. We shared the same sentiment. It was like a movie, too good to be true, but it was true nonetheless. It was true at that moment.

She rolled back over and I held her from behind. Did I ever have to let go? I should’ve never let her leave. Fuck food, fuck TV, fuck everybody else. We could have stayed in bed forever and never “accomplished” anything and nothing could have made me happier.

“I love you,” I said softly.

“I love you more,” she whispered.

Could I have died in that moment I would have.

***

The night was still young.

The 808s were blaring out of the car’s speakers. The music was way too loud but we were all so fucked up it didn’t matter. Cars passed, lights danced. You couldn’t hardly see the stars from around the city but you knew they were always there, just watching your every move, laughing at how small and vulnerable you were.

Keith practically skidded around a corner. He was dangerous when he was drunk but somehow always managed to make it where he was going. We were all laughing and joking around, dancing to the music and shoving into each other, acting like we were trying to make the car swerve off the road.

You could always tell Tommy was a little nervous in situations like these, but after a couple months of the four of us galavanting around together he had gotten used to it. He would just get really drunk before we drove anywhere so he didn’t care either. Seemed like a good solution to me.

I was halfway through a water bottle of girly vodka. It was like 21% or something. It tasted so good, though, so you could just keep drinking and drinking and it was easy. Then you’d get really drunk really fast and just keep drinking. You’d wake up the next day with the usual headache, grab some advil and go get some coffee and maybe breakfast.

We liked to think we just did whatever but we basically had a routine. We didn’t always go to the same places, but we were pretty much always doing the same things in the same order. It was always fun, though, but I never enjoyed anything too much. I acted like I did, and it was cool, but my mind was just always floating somewhere else, even when I was beyond fucked up.

“Motherfuckers!” Keith yelled randomly.

We all stopped in shock. Crispy and I peered around from the back to the driver’s seat. Tommy was stunned. “What?” He let out a high shriek, which had me and Crispy giggling in the back. Keith turned and grinned at us, the car shifting back and forth on the road.

“Let’s fucking GO!”

Goddamnit, that man Keith loved to turn up. You could see Tommy’s anxiety melt in the front seat. Then he let out a frat-like roar and we were back to it.

We all raged. The car was shaking but we were all laughing and yelling.

When we pulled up to the party we could see that it was going to be a wild night. Even on the lawn, the number of girls far outweighed the number of guys. We were all excited as hell. Even at big schools it was rare to find the party where the girls outnumbered the guys. This was special, though. This frat was the frat of one of Keith’s friends from some class. The guy had just taken a liking to Keith, as most did. He was kind of in love with him in that fratty, bro-mance type of way. He always wanted Keith and us to come hang out with him. He knew we were always down to turn up.

Keith never liked anyone too much but he loved on everyone. I think that’s part of the reason people loved him so much, besides all the drunkenness and hilarity. He was a genuinely nice, funny dude.

Keith’s friend was outside and when he saw us, went (as they say) ape-shit. He had bottle with barely any drink left in it and proudly smashed it on the ground as he darted over to say “wassup.”

“My fucking boys!” He exclaimed proudly.

Next thing you know everybody was yelling and getting rowdy and the girls were loving it. We were all going to get laid tonight, all five of us. Sometimes you can just feel that energy. Sometimes you show up and people look at you like you’re really something. We had a rep for being fucked up, and in college, that’s merit. You would think it was a great skill or something the way people treated us. But we just liked to go wild. Fuck it, we were young. We were done studying, what did we have to lose?

***

It must be quite a feeling: being your first love’s first love. Being in love for the first time with someone who’s also falling in love for the first time is a crazy concept. I’m almost glad it didn’t happen to me. I don’t think I could’ve handled it.

Being that I wasn’t her first love made it easier I think. Because when it hit me that it was over, that I would never be enough for her, I realized something: I had never been through this feeling. I had never been in love. I wasn’t a virgin when I met her, but I was a virgin to love. I had been in a state of apathy and numbness. My life was moving at me and I was sitting there watching it go by out a foggy window.

I wasn’t her first love. I kept reminding myself that. It never meant to her what it did to me. I was thinking about forever with her. I couldn’t see how anything could keep us apart for too long. Even when we finally broke and parted ways for the last time, I still held out hope that the universe would push us back together. It had to, I thought, we were soulmates. And I didn’t even believe in soulmates until I met her.

You weren’t her first love, I would remind myself when things got too dark. She wasn’t a monster. She wasn’t so evil that she would drag me through the mud just for a kick. She had simply been in love before. Multiple times. She had told me very openly. I liked that. Then she would say, “but not like this.” That always made it seem better for me. Then when I saw the texts from her to that guy it became clearer (though all was confusing): she had said and felt these things before, and for other people. This was not her first merry-go-round.

It helped me to believe she did have some love for me, though it couldn’t be like the love I had for her. In my heart I had committed to her, committed to making US work. She hadn’t, how could she? She had seen love grow and be vanquished. She had seen lovers turn abusive and vengeful. She had watched the roses of love bloom and wilt before her eyes in an instant. I was just another rose blooming from the concrete, here today and gone tomorrow. When I wasn’t exciting enough for her, when the feeling of being held in my arms was simply a temporary comfort, then I was dead to her. I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I guess she was just going to watch me wilt, pick off my petals and toss me to the dirt.

I still had strong feelings for her, and they still won’t recede. My love for her was something new for me. I had never longed to be with somebody before. I hadn’t ever really missed anyone before. I was just sitting around watching life go by, laughing and having a smoke, but never crying, never feeling anything too strongly. I was living lightly, but my demons were always persistent.

Curse this ground that swallows me whole. Curse the creator of this world, the one who allowed me to feel this way. I gave my all to her and even though it wasn’t much, it was all I had left. What can I do now? I can’t find another girl, my heart will never be fully in it. Maybe that’s why so many marriages and loves fail. Maybe people can never really get over that first love. Maybe it hangs over your head forever like a resilient raincloud, making the distance dark and scary.

In this world love is but a silly game. If she had loved me the way I loved… There is no right way. Someone is always on the uphill and someone in the relationship is always reaching down the other side of the hill, or trying to climb up another hill to get to someone else. There’s all these mazes and hidden tunnels and backwards ways to get around the hills of love but nobody masters it. She loved me until she realized I really was all in for her. Then it wasn’t enough, the chase was over. She had quickly lulled me to sleep in her loving arms. Then she needed validation from that guy she had never fully figured out. The pattern will always continue.

That’s the moment when the worst fears come back, the darkest corners of your mind seep into the light. The eternal separation we all face, the anxiety that comes with knowing how alone you really are, it all makes its way to the forefront of that one lobe in your brain- you know what I’m talking about.

The worst feeling yet creeps in- maybe I gave up on the love of my life. Maybe that was the moment I was supposed to be there no matter what. Maybe she wasn’t testing my love, maybe the gods were. Maybe if I could have showed her I was there for her no matter what, maybe only then she would have realized the kind of love we were capable of reaching. Maybe I needed to set down that pride and love her unconditionally. Maybe it was I who needed to prove to her that I was hers no matter what, and I was willing to fight through whatever to be there with her.

However, that thought was readily replaced with a more realistic, more worldly concern. What if I did give her all my love and it was never enough? If I looked at the facts, that is, the things I knew about her, her family, the things she had told me compared to the actions she took, the way she was always falling in and out of love with me, then I must conclude that I never would be enough for her. Giving her all my love wouldn’t even mean a thing to her. It would be more pathetic than anything.

Maybe she needed someone more exciting, someone who was going to cheat, lie, and hurt her, but then come back with a beautiful necklace for her. Maybe she needed someone who told her how much he needed her whenever she was slipping away and then told her she was a whore when she came too close. Maybe she needed someone who would go fist-fight any guy who even snuck a peek at her. It must have been exciting, even if it was nothing more than possessive and twisted, being needed that much.

Still, she walked away from him so I thought that meant something. I didn’t think she was using me to get back at him but maybe she was. Maybe my love was all-consuming and all too real and all she felt towards me was nothing. I could have easily been a pawn in her game. She always made it seem like I had the high ground, like she was chasing after me, but maybe she knew she could build me up and then do as she pleased with me. Maybe she knew telling me all those beautiful things would go to my head and I would do anything to have her around.

Maybe when I finally broke it off the only reason she came back and asked me to stay was because to her love is a game and she thought she had lost. Sleepless nights, loss of appetite and countless cuts across my arms and legs would say otherwise. But maybe love was impossible for both of us. I wasn’t easy to love, I was gone most of the time- lost in my own world. Maybe I loved her because she made me feel like the man. It was nice to have a gorgeous, off-the-wall, erratic girl on my arm and on my Insta feed. Maybe it was my ego that loved her so much. Maybe losing her was a blow to my unfed ego. I had gone so long without any validation, maybe I was just desperate for some love and attention.

How could I blame her for anything the way my fucked up head runs circles around itself? How could I expect her to always love me when I hadn’t always been there for her?

How can I get rid of all these twisted thoughts?

Love is so backwards. We want what we cannot have. We love the things that don’t love us back. We chase things that hardly stop to look back at us. We find some semblance of love and then it gets boring. We get tired. We want something new, something different. It’s never enough. Love is never enough, nothing is ever enough. We are born, then we look, then we die. Commitment is surrender; it’s giving up hope that there is more out there. We lose no matter what. We laugh, we cry, and then we die all in the blink of a cloudy eye.

You can’t be mine, you could never be mine. You can’t be mine like I can’t be yours, no matter how hard we try. Life will come between us; the sway of emotions, the tension of distance, the sun, moon, and stars will pull us apart. They have more time to laugh before they die. We don’t go out in a beautiful explosion of lights and colors, we die in our own blood, sweat, and vomit. What are we but dust in the wind? We live to kill and die to leave a foul stench in the air. Each man carries the burden of all the sins that have ever been committed. Not a soul is exonerated.

***

It had been almost a year without her before I realized what I had thought about life the whole time up to her was really on point. I don’t dare to claim I know the truth of love and life, but I after that time I realized that you have to tread lightly. Life is gray, not black and white. There’s always space in between. There’s always distance keeping us apart, even when touch seemingly brings us together.

We try to communicate but people don’t really know what we’re saying. We don’t really know what they’re saying. It’s all in some space, some realm of ideas, where the known and unknown dance around in circles, intertwining and pulling apart. They are always keeping us guessing. If things look exactly one way, you know there’s trouble.

That’s what the love I had for her was. Trouble. It looked one way- like I needed her and she needed me. Through the fog I had put my head down, shut my eyes, and locked off my brain. I was going full steam ahead with no regard for the sad logic of a sad life.

None of it was her fault. My hurt was a part of the gray of life. I saw in black in white. I saw her and me, and no one else. The times she lied to me, the times she made me wait outside of frat houses, the time (or times?) she texted and flirted with other guys- the hurt from those situations came from my expectation of her. I wanted more than was there. I needed her and I needed her to need me the same. But she didn’t. And that’s not on her. That’s happening somewhere up in that gray fog. I was hurting myself. I loved that pain.

It was pain that brought us together and pain that tore us apart. We bonded over the pain of life until the pain of some other life ripped us apart. I don’t think it happened all at once, nothing ever does. It starts with little tears in the seams and holes in the fabric. I was blind to these. Then the weight of the wind started to open them up. When it became too much, when the bond was torn, that’s the moment I noticed it and it was far too late. What could I have done? I am no good with repairs.

***

Being with her sober was a treat, but doing drugs together took us to a whole new level. There’s nothing like holding the hands of the person you love at the height of a good roll. High sex is the best sex, even though sex is pretty much always good. In our case, the drugs and sex and all the pain and lust and agony formed a wild team that kept me stirring many a lonely night.

Her touch was honey, her kiss a sweet surrender. Her eyes were fragments of tiny stars and her body was a John Mayer song. I fell in love with everything about her. My whole body was shaking, my eyes were wide, and that warm, loving sensation made the rounds all over my body. That was just what she was doing to me. The little, colorful pills heightened what I already felt. We were dancing one second and holding each other tightly the next. I had never experienced anything so beautiful but it was all a blur.

It was like a dream, rolling with her. It was too good to be true. Every word came so softly out of her tiny mouth. Every brush of her hair was cool breeze in the desert. I was lost in feelings and emotions. It was too much but it was so good. I was loving someone and touching someone and they were feeling it all, too. All the energy I was giving she was reciprocating and all the energy she was giving I was reciprocating.

It was like being two parts of a whole. We were two parts of a whole finding each other and coming together as one. And in that formation there was power, beauty, and love. It was warm and safe as it was dark and wild. Rain clouds were pretty, and storms brought comfort. We went outside and danced in the rain like we were kids. That’s what it took for us to feel like kids, to feel free: hard drugs and love. Only with the combination could we really get away from all the madness. Only in a different madness was there peace from all the madness.

***

Way below the ocean we dip our toes in, way above the sky we look up to is a wave of color and motion. Not the eye can see it, not the ear can hear it. It is always moving, always in motion, but it is beyond our physical perception. I want to shoot up in a rocket and explode into a glorious display of color and motion.

There is a castle on a distant hill overlooking a shimmering pond that beckons to lonely travelers in the night. It is high and narrow, it’s daunting tower reaching to the sky. The travelers look for it but do not find it.

One man holds the hand of one woman and they walk into the unknown, completely alone but unaware of it. They speak but do not make sounds. They listen but do not hear. They touch but do not feel.

The body is but a prison and the mind, its walls. There is a reach happening, the arm shoots out into a starry sky, its fingers stretch out in all directions. It grasps nothing. It feels nothing but the air pressed against it. The hand returns to the body, silent and alone, hoping, but never seeing that hope fulfilled.

Death comes swiftly and without reason. All is gained and lost in an instance. The more the eye sees the less the mind knows. One mouth is mute and one talks unabashedly but both say nothing. One limp hand holds another limp hand. One cold body holds another cold body.

***

I don’t hate people for lying.

I hate myself for believing them.

My demons remind me how alone I am. I think everyone is alone but I’m only one tiny, tiny person on this tiny, tiny rock in this vast, vast universe. All I’m aware of is my singularity. I’m me and “me” is just a word for the body I perceive and believe in. Somewhere, between the realm of ideas I experience in my mind and the physical world I touch with my hands, there must be a real reality. I am not experiencing this real reality. I am lost in a world of faith and hope and the opposite of those.

I don’t lie but I don’t tell the truth. I don’t even know what the truth is. It’s too much of a heavyweight concept. I can’t wrap my head around it.

A breath escapes but the hands of the world are back on my neck in an instance.

“Snap out of it.”

I heard Crispy laughing and turned to see him come down the stairs.

“That bitch really got you fucked up, slime,” he joked.

I shook my head and let out a half-laugh, half-sigh.

“The pussy can’t be that good,” he continued.

It was sick how guys talked in private, and girls weren’t much better if you’ve heard about their conversations. We’re all pretty fucked up when it comes down to it. There’s a veil, a way we want to pretend things are, but behind it there’s a dark truth that’s always there no matter what.

I want to be the same all the time. When I was dating her that’s the way I imagined it all was. I thought of us like Bonnie and Clyde or Sid and Nancy. We were wild and dangerous, rebelling against whatever was before us, but we were honest and we were us. I thought it was so real. She said things that she meant and I said them back with a full heart. We weren’t perfect but we were real.

Now it all feels like a lie.

“JC! Dude,” Crispy was chuckling as he poured a bowl of Reese’s Puffs. “I got something you need, on the house, you in bad shape.”

He walked over to the TV, grabbed the controller, turned on cartoons and then plopped down on the other side of the couch with his cereal. He turned to me, and with a mischievous grin, reached into his pocket and withdrew a small baggy. In it were those little white pills.

“Re-up.”

I grinned. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

“Gimme that shit,” I smiled and dapped him up, almost knocking the cereal bowl out of his hand.

“Motherfucker,” he laughed as a bit of milk spilled over the side and wet the wooden floor. “For real, I got you, though. I hate to see you suffering like this, that love shit ain’t no joke.”

***

I couldn’t help but find myself wanting to occupy some middle ground in her mind. I didn’t want to do this whole “flexing on my ex” thing that was so popular; however, I didn’t want to go to a pathetic and lost state in her mind, though that is where I really was. If I could have it my way all the way, I would be somewhere in the middle of her thoughts. I didn’t want her to think, “Oh, that JC’s got a new girl and she’s prettier than me, I fucked up.” I also didn’t want her knowing, “Oh, JC walked away from me but he’ll always come crawling back because he’s pathetic and he’ll always need me.”

That middle ground, that’s where I longed to be. When she thought of me, which I liked to imagine she still did, I wanted her to wonder. I wanted her to know I was hurt by her actions, but that life had carried on the way it does and I was still the always-sad but always-moving JC I had always been. I mean that was true, I was sad before her, sad during her, and sad again after her. I had always been sad, it was my nature, my inclination. Still, I didn’t want her to be the reason I had finally fallen into a deeper, darker state of depression. I wanted the status quo depression to continue and I wanted her to know it. I wanted her thinking, “Oh, that JC was sad and he always will be.” I wanted her to smile when she said it but I wanted her to cry sometimes when she thought about what she threw away.

But what was the truth? I wanted her back? I still loved her? I would never get over her?

What was the truth: what should I have been concerned with- moving on finally or letting the honest truth play out in my life?

Walking away from her made me sadder than I had ever been but somehow I managed better than I did that time ago (what felt like ages) when I lost control of my pill usage and overdosed. Was it I who wanted it to hurt more than it really did? Maybe I was competing with how I assumed she felt to feel worse. How did she feel, really? Behind her steely gaze, her upturned nose, how did she feel about me? Is it possible that she really did love me and kept on loving me after I walked away? Or did she view me as a possession? Maybe it only hurt her because she never thought she could lose me no matter what she did. Maybe I was her safe-house, and she was free to do as she pleased and then run back to my arms when things got messy.

What were we made of? Where did we stand? Questions with no answers, questions come with no answers, and answers are simply the babblings of people living in a fear so great they will accept anything that can momentarily soothe their soul.

***

When I was a kid, my father let me adopt a puppy from a shelter. I loved that puppy and Keith loved him as well, but he was a frightened and disturbed animal. Despite my efforts, he was always trying to escape. Whenever a door would open he would try to run out. I figured he had abandonment issues, like a human would. Though he was in a safe place, he couldn’t ever really accept it. He couldn’t interpret our affection and our caring for him as love, something in his life had made him ever so wary. He must have held that paranoia deep inside of him.

Almost every time that door swung up he was up and at ’em. He would go flying through rooms and occasionally knock things over. I wondered what terrible things had been done to him to make him this way. My father considered getting rid of him but I said I would fight for him. I would help him learn and grow until he realized he really was safe and could find peace here.

I made that promise. It was me. I really thought I could do it. I saw how much love and generosity was in that little dog’s heart and I thought I could be there while he learned to behave and accept our love.

I was going to try. I was going to make it work.

Two days later I was taking him for a walk and he was struggling harder than ever to get away. I tried to pet him but he bit me. I knew I would have to hide that from my father. I didn’t know what to do. The poor pup kept on struggling to get the leash off and get away from me. If only he could know that I just wanted to help. Maybe affection was too much for him. Maybe he was used to feeling it for a second and then being beaten. Maybe love scared that puppy. Maybe he had gotten used to abuse so much that he now relied on it.

I stopped on the sidewalk and considered the world around me. The dog kept snarling and tugging at the leash. I relented. I didn’t even remove the leash, it would be another weight for him to carry but he made his choice; I just let go and watched him scurry off into the unforgiving night.

***

I was cold and hot at the same time. I threw off my blanket but then I was immediately shivering. I pulled it back over myself but it felt like a flame burning my skin at the very slightest touch. I tossed and turned; I flipped my pillow over and over; I struggled for any type of comfort.

I needed my girl. I needed to call her; I needed to hear her voice. I jumped out of the bed and looked furiously for my phone. I felt lost; I couldn’t think straight. I needed my baby; I needed her touch; I needed her love; I needed her heart.

I stopped. I was dripping sweat. My heart was racing. My eyes were flickering like a broken streetlight. I waited. I tried to breathe. Breathe in for four seconds, hold for four seconds, breathe- I was missing something. My heart sped up. I must have been dying. I couldn’t breathe anymore, I tried to but I couldn’t. I needed my love, she was a part of my soul, I was missing my soul…

A hand scratched me across the cheek. Then another. Then another. I needed to snap out of it. I fought but the urge was too much. I ran out into the kitchen, bumping into the door on my way out. I grabbed a kitchen knife and then ran to the bathroom. Everything went black; I needed my lover; I needed my girl; where had she gone; where could she go?

I NEED YOU I LOVE YOU I NEED ME I HATE ME I MISS US I HATE YOU I LOVE YOU I WANT YOU BACK I HOPE YOU DIE I WISH I WAS NEVER BORN I NEED YOUR LOVE I NEED YOUR TOUCH YOU’RE JUST LIKE THE REST YOU NEVER LOVED ME I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I NEED YOU I NEED YOU FUCK YOU GO TO HELL HOLD ME CLOSER NEVER LET ME GO PLEASE HOLD ON BABY PLEASE HOLD ON BABY PLEASE DON’T LET ME GO PLEASE DON’T LET ME GO PLEASE DON’T LET ME GO PLEASE DON’T LET ME GO

***

Suddenly Keith was yelling at me and shaking me. I tried to understand what was happening. I could see his mouth moving but I couldn’t hear what he was yelling. He looked hysterical.

“What’s wrong?”

He suddenly stopped as the words escaped my mouth.

“What’s wrong!? What the fuck do you think is wrong? Look at you; you’re covered in blood!”

***

The first time I had sex after our breakup it felt terrible. I couldn’t stop feeling guilty. We had been broken up for a while but I felt like I was cheating. I knew who I wanted to be with; I knew who I wanted to love, and it was her and only her. How could I enjoy life with somebody else?

One girl, another girl, and then another and with every notch on my bedpost I felt more and more numb. I couldn’t even see these girls, real girls, real people with feelings and thoughts, dreams and aspirations, and none of it was even visible to me. Every time I made love to someone that wasn’t her I felt nothing but numb. I was satisfying a biological need and nothing else.

Life is cold and unbothered. The universe seems to be indifferent. It’s not that some are shown favor and others are penalized for the same act of being born, but rather some are in the right place at the right time and others are not. That’s how I see it.

A week ago I was with a girl and she told me no one ever loved her. I wonder why she told me of all people. I had only just met her earlier that night. Was it pity she wanted? Was she just a little too drunk? Was she speaking her mind or manipulating mine? I feel the same but there’s only two people I’ve ever told: Keith and her.

Keith just said everybody felt like that sometimes and we moved on to laughing about something else. When I told her she told me she felt the same. We talked about the distance between us. We talked about how we could make it together. I really thought she meant every word. How could I feel any different?

Life and love and everything in between. Life and death with love in between. Life after death, love after death? Maybe it’s just life and death and love is somewhere outside of it all. We’re all reaching for it but we’re not getting anywhere. Maybe there’s nowhere to get to.

I’ve been running in circles my whole life.

***

To death but a game

To love but a slave

To man but a name

To life but a grave

To have and to hold

To die and grow cold

To call for your love

To fall from above

***

Keith and I waved goodbye as our parents drove away. It was a bittersweet moment for me, but it appeared to be pure elation for Keith.

“I thought they’d never leave,” he chuckled.

“I’ma miss those two,” I let out.

“Of course you will,” he smiled, “but don’t be all sentimental, college is dope, it’ll grow on you fast as fuck!”

College was every middle class kid’s wet dream come to life. Girls, parties, drugs and alcohol. There was something to do every night. No more waiting for plans or loitering around like we did in high school.

Keith had told me all the crazy stories, the ones he could remember, from his freshman year. From bar fights to off campus raves to girls twerking on kitchen tables, Keith made it sound like heaven. It was for him. “I’d do this for the rest of my life if I could,” he laughed.

I laughed, too. I guess that wouldn’t really be so bad. It wouldn’t be worse than anything else you could do on this boring earth.

A moment of silence crept by. Pictures played through in my head.

“I fucking hate you,” Keith was still laughing when he said it. He was almost giddy. I was glad he was excited for me to be at college with him, to experience all this shit with him, but the college lifestyle didn’t mean as much to me as it did to him.

“You’re always so…”

Keith stopped for a minute. He squinted at me. He was being funny but I could feel there was something else he was really getting at.

“So unmoved.” He paused again. “So, so, so, so unmoved.”

I grinned. “Unmoved, yeah, that’s it.”

We both laughed but we both knew it was true. Nothing moved me. Life just moved at me and I just let it go by.

“Let’s get to the commons, c’mon, I’ll show you where the hotties are,” he was still laughing. We were always laughing when we were together.

“Wait,” I stopped, a stupid grin still plastered across my face.

Keith stopped moving and glanced over. “What’s up, bruh?”

Two brothers, two stupid grins.

I rolled my eyes in preparation for what I was about to say, but not sarcastically, no, not sarcastically but in that e-boy, ‘hehe’ kind of way. Keith laughed disgustedly.

“Don’t ever make that face again.”

The laughter continued.

“For real, though, what’s up?”

I grinned. “Any last advice before we embark on this journey?”

Keith made a face like he was thinking really hard. Then he broke out of it.

“Just, for god’s sake, whatever you do…” His voice trailed off.

He smiled.

I grinned back. “What?”

He laughed.

Then he sighed.

“Don’t fall in love.”

***

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