I started drinking early to numb the rougher edges of having to be me. Because I never really understood the part I was destined to play. My piece never seemed to fit cleanly anywhere, so I had to constantly pound myself into all the wrong holes. There wasn’t anyone available to explain the intricacies of it all to me; I was born, starving, into a world of want.
And that sensation of insatiable hunger never really went away. So something had to fill it.
When I initially asked for comfort in my more tender years, I was mocked. Belittled for being so weak. When I confessed the dark secrets unwillingly grunted inside of me, I was ridiculed to such an extent, I actually believed it when they said it was my fault.
So when I was old enough, I turned my attentions to complicating the most unhealthy relationships possible. Used my throbbing member as an instrument of retribution. Fucking my way to an absolution that just wasn’t cumming. No matter how many times the sheets were soaked.
I painstakingly built worlds of comfort. Only to turn right the fuck around and destroy them. Because their significance made me nervous. And I knew deep down that I didn’t really deserve them. So they all had to come tumbling down.
I sharpened my words on the heated battlefields of too many disastrous uncouplings. Targeted the barbs for maximum damage. Leaving splinters behind to fester. Instilling doubt. Shining the world’s largest spotlight on the most glaring insecurities. Because in a M.A.D. world, the only shot that really matters is the first one. And I always made sure to make it count.
Because I felt that familiar panic. I had to hurt them before they could ever hurt me. I had grown accustomed to living an impenetrable life. Deflecting blows casually. Intentionally identifying as an unrepentant asshole, unafraid to say the quiet parts out loud. And directly to faces reflecting back the hurt of unprovoked verbal injury.
I was a master of wordplay—it should have been foreplay. But I twisted that, too. Nothing could touch me.
Until suddenly everything did.
People began to matter. Those rougher edges began to crave a softer influence. Splinters of my own, ignored for years, began working their way to the surface.
And all because of a girl I had no right to love.
Once I committed to that moment, my world, perpetually caught in a swirl of grey chaos, burst into colored focus. She made me miss things I never even realized I had lost. I suddenly understood the meaning of the one four letter word whose definition has constantly eluded me the entirety of my adult life.
But the irony is that we will never live out that happily ever after. I could never earn that right. She is beyond my reach; I am too used up and ugly.
That is the price that must be paid when two hearts collide into each other at the worst possible time. When life and families and innocent hearts all overlap into a complicated mess of entangled emotions.
For once, I have to stand up and do the right thing. Because I know that she won’t. This is uncharted territory. But it’s my hit to take; I can’t shy away from the bitterness of taking my medicine.
And once I have stood up, I fully expect to fall right the fuck back down again—it was foolish to think I could ever break free of that high-proof codependency.
I guess some relationships really are meant to last a lifetime.
And the sooner I pour another handle on that, the better off I will be…
