the self-inflicted suffocation
They always come on at night when the house is silent except for Sid’s steady breathing next to my ear.
The random drunk memories with that sticky, drowny, tar-like feeling of guilt and remorse that cling to them.
They avalanche all over me and soon I’m suffocating in so much regret and self-hatred.
I can’t say them out loud when the sun is awake. These memories are meant for a padlocked box in the least visited corner of my mind but if they are ever to escape, it will be in darkness, hidden in small paper envelopes for strangers to find. I’d prefer strangers to know them, if anyone must, than the people who make my world bright.
There are some I will never tell, the ones that dig into my flesh and break apart; little sharp splinters that worm their way in and are far too much trouble to remove. I know they will rot and fester if left inside but they will only be removed when there is nobody there to see what happens when I dig them out.
It almost feels that I don’t want to be sober as such, I just don’t want to be drunk and sad. I don’t think there’s a place in that middle ground for me, though. I’m either dry as stone, or drowning. Is it because I’m greedy and selfish and never satisfied? I want more, more, more of that feeling and it doesn’t matter who gets trampled under my feet, as long as I get what I want.
Until the next day, when I wake up and need their forgiveness. Need it so badly that I feel my heart and soul breaking until they give it. And they do every time, despite the mess I make and the harm I inflict. I don’t remember that harm so I can’t feel as bad as I should. But they remember. Every knife-edge word, every scathing look, every fall and stumble, and the booze-addled ‘truths’ that fall from my lips in the moments where my eyes are rolling in my head and I don’t know my own name.
Dirt has more self-esteem than I do in the days that follow a binge. There isn’t a crack in the wall small enough for me to hide in or a room dark enough for me to disappear into.
Some people collect stamps or snow globes but I collect guilt and bad memories. I get tired of feeling bad about things that I could prevent if I would just get some self-discipline and do the right thing. I’m sick of saying sorry, because I know how hollow it seems after the thousandth time, but every time it happens, I am sorry. More sorry than I felt the last time, more panicked; it’s harder to breathe through the overwhelming guilt than it was last week because I know that with every wrong step I take, the ice is getting thinner. I don’t have many steps left before it disappears from under me and I’m alone and sinking.
And with every single hangover comes the desire to disappear from everyone’s world. Not die in some Suicidal Spectacular, just quietly slip away where nobody knows me, where there’s nobody to hurt or disappoint or ruin. Just like moving to Melbourne. Only eventually I will run out of cities and I don’t speak a foreign language so that limits my affordable foreign options significantly.
But it doesn’t count them out. Not entirely.
