i’m sitting on the dirty carpet in l’s basement. everything smells like ferret piss. i might be young but i am not afraid of you and your razor blades and mirrors and scales. prior to this moment i had never seen cocaine in real life but something in me wants it badly as soon as it appears. the careful actions of weighing, cutting lines, rolling dirty bills and inhaling are propelled by the same instincts that guide my hands when i eat, when i brush my teeth, when i type. everything feels natural.

the pain is not what i was expecting, not more or less but different, hot and cold rammed through my sinuses and directly into my brain and then trickling slowly through every inch of my body until the feeling reaches the very tip of each finger. and then everything is perfect, perfect, perfect, sharp and clear like broken glass in the chemical opposite-of-fog enveloping me. the bitter taste, that quiet reminder that this is not really me, is a small price i am willing to pay to exist so brightly.

for the next four years i am alive. i may be fighting and clawing and struggling to stay so but i keep going, going, with the knowledge that all i need to do is breathe deep to fix everything.

after a certain point the pain is irrelevant and i am alone with the strangely vibrant person that i suddenly am. i am related only in the barest of minimum ways now to you and l and your dirty basement and your skinny greasy business associates and the messy parties and this abrupt new world that appeared and grew with my understanding of my own mind.

i am alone now

i feel stupid and immature and irrational but i also feel relieved and calm. somewhere deep down i know he will notice but maybe that’s what i want, all i’ve ever wanted, his attention.

i am back in control. everything is going back to the way it used to be. nothing is more perfect than these clean, tidy, parallel lines. i want to believe that i don’t need anything else, not even him, but i know that isn’t true so instead i’ll pull away from everything else, from food and from friends and from school and from work until i fade away quietly into nothing.

i’m in a time machine now and the clock is ticking back about 5 years maybe 6 to the moment when i realized that i didn’t need anyone and everything started

right now it might seem like that was a bad place but while i was there it was the best place i’ve ever been.

i know it’s lazy but sometimes it is comforting to think i can blame most of my unhappiness on her existence

and i don’t feel bad because maybe (probably) she feels the same way about me

when i see pictures of her (or hear you mention her) i understand what it means to feel one’s blood boil

my heart feels like it’s being squeezed or maybe like a towel being wrung out and all i can think of is how much she looks like me how much prettier she is than me how much better with her words she is than me how much you must have liked her

and then the nausea hits when i realize again that she is who i would be if i had never met you

everything around me is old and decaying and falling apart.

when we had only known each other for a little while i wrote a craigslist missed connection about you

everyone that replied said that it was beautifully written but i was sure none of them were you

i wish i could read it again and remember what it was like to be that desperately, unabashedly in love with you.

everything else becomes inconsequential when you are faced with the possibility that the person you love is drifting away from you