Tonight I had a drink

Tonight I had a drink. It didn't take me too long to realize it was really just a mix of melancholy and madness. I spilled my glass everywhere I walked and everywhere I sat. I smelled extremely bitter. My clothes, my hair, my hands, every part of me reeked of cheap wine. I'm certainly not an expert when it comes to fine wines but at least that is how I imagined it would smell like.

Now that I think about it, he smelled like this too, when he came back home every monday night. I don't know anymore if it was actually cheap wine or was he really sad from the very start. As far as I was concerned he seemed happy. Well at least he seemed peaceful, in his sleep. I barely could see him during the days, and even when I did he was distant. I don't blame him. I guess my walls were too high for him to even try and climb, and his work has already got the best of him so how could I even expect him to make the effort. The only moments we were close were those of love-making, or at least that is how I call it. He barely calls it anything. The making was there, but I'm not sure about the other part of the word. I wish we actually had fights or at least arguments, I would know that there was actually something worth the fight. But none of this happened, everything was just foggy and blurry and the only clear thing about it all is my tears falling at the moment. I guess it all changed one day. We were in love, oh we were. I could spend days telling our story and how happy we were, but it would be too much of a torture, for both of us.

One day it all crumbled down. My parents were, as far as I was concerned, a charming little couple. Until one day, my mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. My father started drinking and left the house after almost a year of struggling to keep it all from shattering. I was left to take care of my mother. It wasn't easy but I wasn't even close to thinking that something worse was about to happen.

One night, while I went to check up on her, she woke up, completely freaked out, I kept trying to calm her down but all she did was move and scream, I had the situation in hand, until she accidently pushed me down the stairs. She ran away in the night, we never saw her again. I was found by one of the neighbors a few moments later, she took me to the nearest hospital and I spent a week in coma, but I finally woke up alright. He was by my side. He slept in the chair beside me for a week. When I woke up he was sleeping and I managed to get out of bed without waking him up. Next thing I know is I'm in the hospital's bathroom, crying in front of the mirror. I broke it and tried slitting my veins with a fragment of glass. He found me lying on the ground crying. He then carried me to my room and called the doctors. I had five stitches and I woke up later at night, he was still there, sleeping. I spent the night looking at him and crying.

Next morning I was finally able to step on my feet and go home. We remained silent during the whole ride. He tried to say something but I turned my head to the window so he just kept quiet. Days passed by, weeks, months, and I was still miserable. We barely even talked or shared anything anymore, except the bed that now felt like a thousand mile distance between us. He began to spend less time at home during the day and more at his work, trying to keep his thoughts from strangling him like my presence did, I guess. He also started drinking more, but never came back home too drunk. I, on the other hand, spent most of my nights, drunk. I sometimes would wake up in the middle of the night, turn on the light, and stare at my scar. It occurred to me at moments to open it again, but I never had the courage to. There were nights I woke up to find him sitting in the living room, his elbow on the table and his hand on his cheek. He kept staring out the window blankly.

I remember one night clearly, he had just got home at midnight and I was still up, drinking coffee and looking at the cars passing by, waiting for his to stop. He looked at me, not just glanced, but actually looked at me, for the first time in a while.  He looked at me while still standing near the door, like he was about to say something, but he didn't. He cleared his throat and then walked slowly towards me, almost like he was about to collapse and fall on the ground. He sat on his knees, right in front of me, and placed his face on my thigh. I can almost still feel his warm tears on my skin every now and then, when I sit on that same chair at midnight. The moment he placed his face on my thigh I felt like my walls were crumbling down, like my heart was being cut in halves, so I held his head and passed my fingers through his hair. He reached for my hand and held it with such delicacy, it almost felt like he was afraid of letting go of it. I never felt so alive, yet so breakable and fragile. We sat like that the whole night, without saying a single word. When he finally fell into slumber his grip began to loosen, but his fingers didn't fully let go of mine. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, but he wouldn't hear me in his sleep, and he wouldn't believe me when awake. That is the only time I recall with both sweetness and bitterness. The rest of it all is just, dull, with sometimes a touch of bitterness. When I woke up that day, he was eventually gone. I didn't expect him to stay and talk to me while sharing a coffee. It's just that it was still hard. I tried so hard to not think of that night as a goodbye. I guess I got fooled at my own game; the moment I let my walls down, a hurricane got in me and rearranged the whole scenery. I desperately looked around in search of a note. But what I found was even better. When we first fell for each other, I gave him a rose. I told him that I had planted all of my hopes and love in the ground when I planted that rose, and if ever comes the day when there is no hope in us staying together anymore, he would give it back to me. By the time we were together I had already forgotten about it, and I thought that he also did. It was drenched in his smell. I held it to my chest and kept smelling it, I almost got high. In some sort of madness, I thought that maybe this was just a phase, that he only needed some time on his own and then he would come back when he felt like it. I soon enough retracted that thought, because all it would bring me was hope and despair. It would never bring him back. I still regret not telling him that I loved him that night. I believe it was all he needed to hear, to stay. But I was too much of a coward to admit something I already knew from the beginning. I guess he didn't.

Tonight I had a drink. It took me three shots to realize it was poison mixed with tears. I didn't plan to kill myself. But I felt like death had planned to visit me a long time ago and was too shy to open the door. Well here it is now, fully opened. I only hope I did better enough than the last time. I guess this is how he felt while he was with me, like he was swallowing poisoned tears, slowly wrecking his insides and eating whatever was left of him.