Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
My fingers played with the rim of the bottle, traced the cap, thumbed the ridges. I still hadn’t drunk any. I watched the people spilling from my house, chatting and dancing by the chiminea, while I sat in a darkened corner at the end of the long garden. I recognised some faces, but not a single one of them knew me beyond my brand. That’s when I took the first sip. That sip turned into a gulp. The gulp, a quarter of a bottle.
I was a fucking idiot.
Regret. It’s the greatest prison of all. Once trapped inside, there is no way out. A wrong choice can never be altered. Time moves forward but the memory of the bad decision doesn’t. Instead, it festers. Rots. Infects everything around it, new thoughts, further judgements. You become stuck. Confined between impenetrable walls of guilt and despair. I’d thought Helen was the key to my freedom. Turned out she was just a shard of light passing through the bars of my cell window, a plaguing reminder of all I’d done, all I would do, why I deserved to be here. Lonely.
Loneliness wasn’t the same as being alone. I liked being alone, always had. It wasn’t a lack of company. I had bucketloads of that. Any time, any place, I could be surrounded by people. Here, now, my house was filled with hundreds, and yet I was dying all on my own. Loneliness is emotional poverty. It’s being invisible in a world where everyone can see you. In the end, it’s the loneliness that ends you, because it steals the last shred of purpose you were holding onto. I had no purpose. My reasons for being here were gone, if they were ever there at all. I had nothing left to achieve in music. I owned more than I needed. I could never love like people deserved. What was the point in my existence?
A couple of people tried to stop me when I headed back into the house. I waved them off like I was busy on my way to do something else. Threw a smile their way. Laughed. It was enough to fool them. Always was. I often wondered whether people believed smiles out of ignorance or necessity. Were they too afraid to pursue the truth, or did they genuinely know no better? I never trusted a happy face, not on its own. I didn’t know whether I had my years of struggling to read social cues to blame, or my experience with pretending my mind wasn’t shattering into a thousand pieces behind the joyful expression on my face, but I always looked deeper. I’d analyse the eyes, their tone, watch their hands. I knew what it felt like to want to disappear while wishing, desperately, someone would find you.
I ended up in the en suite of the master bedroom, once again staring out my reflection. I looked a little worse for wear, my eyes hooded, mouth drooping. Funny how alcohol made other people look better and yourself worse. I still had the bottle in my hand. I looked at it, saw betrayal. Disappointment. Anger. Worry. All the things Helen would feel if she were to walk in on me. I was going to ruin that woman. That magnificent, selfless woman. When I looked at her, I still saw the little brown-haired girl who’d promised to be my friend forever. How long was I gonna hold her to that? How long would I keep holding her back?
I drank some more, watched myself as I did, witnessed the destruction I was about to cause. “Fucking pathetic,” I spat. I hated myself, but not enough to stop, not enough to change. I didn’t feel anything strongly enough for that.
A wave of heat crept up from my neck, burning my cheeks. It made me dizzy. I turned on the cold tap and reached into the cabinet on the wall, fumbling for a flannel, but only managed to knock half a shelf’s contents into the sink. “Fuck.” Limbs heavy, mind numb, I watched the stream of water splash off the bottles of various lotions and gels and soak through the cardboard casings of my prescription medications. My gaze lingered on them, the pills. The cardboard turned soft and sludgy, eventually falling away from the blister packs in tiny clumps before swirling down the drain with the water.
They were supposed to help. Sertraline. Citalopram. Zopiclone. I picked up a strip of zopiclone first, remembered how it was supposed to help me sleep. I suppose it did. But what good was sleep when you had to wake up and face it all over again?
I could lie and say I didn’t know what I was doing when I started popping the pills from the plastic strips one after the other before tossing them to the back of my mouth. I could say it was a spur of the moment thing, blame the alcohol, the same booze I used to swish them down my throat. I’d be lying, though. Again. I swallowed each handful on purpose. If Helen’s face entered my head, I shoved her right back out. I didn’t convince myself she’d be better off without me, didn’t try and justify it; I simply refused to care. In that moment, I wouldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t allow a single thought or emotion to enter my mind or my heart. There wasn’t room. Only pain…and it had to stop. Once and for all it needed to fucking stop.