North 3

I could hardly see the road through my tears. As if wet cotton had been stuck before my eyes, my vision consisted of squints and guesses. There was no way I was making it home under this pain and at this tremendous speed, so I forced my brakes to stop me on the side of the highway.
My chest and throat were aching, being burned, whipped, singed by the water on my face. I was hurt so bad. So goddamn f*****g bad. How could she have said that? No, it wasn't her, surely it was her hangover talking, right? I didn't know. I wanted to know. I wanted her. She hated me, I knew she hated me. She despised me, only wanted me as a pair of hips to grind when no one else was next to her. I thought back to all of the times I had assured her I'd always be there no matter what, and sitting in the driver's seat of my car on the side of the highway with dawn watching me cry, I threw every word I had said onto the concrete.
If she hated me so much, why couldn't I hate her? Even then, gasping for breath between Misery's fingers, I didn't feel anything toward her but sorrow, maybe a little pity. I had reserved all evil intentions for myself, it seemed; and that pain hurt all the more. It was my fault I let her so close. Had I just ignored the text I would've woken up in my own bed, in my right head. But I would've woken up alone, that's why I did what I did. I needed to be with her last night just as much as she thought she needed to be with me, and that was the warm, bitter-salty truth. Whether I admitted it to myself or not, I had not moved on at all. That wall I had broken down last night must've been what moving on is supposed to be, and where I've found myself now, on the other side of my own rubble, was her house, monolithic in its own self-degrading way.
I closed my eyes with my hands and took one long, deep breath that sounded like forty. I inhaled her artistic face, her body like silk, her longing gravity in my arms. I exhaled nails, screws, reality doused in vodka. I slowly put my car into drive, and then I whimpered, and then I cringed at my own weakness, and then I became enraged at the memory of the nymph who weakened me, and then I became disgusted at the thought of being angry at the creature that shared my heart. And so that wheel turned; me hating myself, me blaming her, me hating myself for blaming her, me blaming her for making me hate myself. The insanity of it was enough to produce a hollow sadness in my ribs.
I drove forward, merged into the travel lane. My vision was much clearer, but what I saw was tainted by self-negligence.