We’re walking along the Inner Harbor.

    Hand in hand.

    There are people in line for the boat tours.  And people in line for the restaurants.

    There are people sitting on ledges, and people performing music, and people just being people.

    We pass them.  We walk on.

    Hand in hand.

    Then my Mother calls.  My Mother calls on Mother’s Day.

    The Girl demands I answer it.  Speak with her.

    And I comply.

    I comply as we walk hand in hand.

    My Mother asks how I am and I tell her.

    She asks what I’m doing and I tell her.

    She asks who I’m with and I lie to her.

I lie to her and suddenly, we’re not hand in hand.

    Suddenly I’m walking alone.

    Suddenly, I’m off the phone with an empty palm along the Inner Harbor.

    Exhausted.  I am exhausted.

    What has this week proved?
   
    It has proved I have no resolve.  It’s proved life can manipulate me in whatever way it chooses.  I am malleable.  Amorphous.  Weak.

I sleep fully clothed when I sleep alone.

These chilly mornings are the most pleasant moments of my days.  Nothing is happening.  The world hasn’t started yet.  My world.  My terror.  

And I’m still trying to get things right.  Always.  Always trying to get things right.

And maybe this is a poor perspective.  Maybe it’s best to let things flow.  Maybe it’s best to move with the current instead of against it.

I couldn’t tell you, really.  My decisions have delivered me here.

Pounding away on this crummy laptop because I need to distract myself from the fact that my life has not turned out the way I planned, and I do nothing to remedy that situation.

Are these all lies?

Too tired.  Much too tired.

I speak with Her yesterday.  She says she doesn’t remember this week.  It’s simply not there for Her.

I tell Her that’s probably for the best.  

It wasn’t too great anyway. 

    What to say?

    I’m hell to be around.  I sense it, but do nothing about it.  Different friends enter my house on different nights.  I’m blessed with love from these wonderful people.  

But my demeanor oozes with sadness.  Sorrow.  Lassitude.

    Yes, lassitude.

My smile fools no one.  I speak when spoken to.  Chuckle at appropriate moments.  Feign interest in the activity chosen.  And follow suit when the party moves.

I’m despondent.  Removed.  

I’m just not here.

    And I remember a similar point in time.  It strikes me when I’m seated on the couch, in another area of the house from everyone else.  Everyone who is preparing veggie burgers, sauteed kale with leeks, and cheese biscuits in the kitchen.  

My friends.  

My beautiful friends.

    But it strikes me and I must find documentation.  I must find help from my former self.  I lived through this then, I can definitely live through this now.


    So I sprint up the stairs and rush to my closet.  I pull the cardboard box from drugstore.com that sits in the corner, buried in clothes.  I drop it in the center of my room and drop down beside it.  I scour my journals.  Read every line from so many years ago.  Notes fall from the pages that were written by concerned lovers.  Notes that permeate my thick skin.

And the usual happens.  

The norm of this past week.  

I cry.  I sob reading these things.  

But I can’t find the words I’m searching for.  

I simply did not write during the time I should’ve been writing.  Should’ve been moving my pen for the me I currently am.

    The me that needs so much assistance right now.

    The me that’s lashing out for some sort of assurance that this will all be ok.  

    Please, let this all turn out ok.

    But there’s not a word written on it.  Not a single word.

    Damn.

    What were all the things I wanted to write here?  The thoughts that kept me up last night?  The thoughts that ignored how tight I kept my eyelids?  And ignored the Mirtazapine?  And ignored the Trazodone?  And persisted and insisted on badgering me?

    This all feels so terribly wrong.

    And I must find these things out for myself.  I must feel the experience.  I must know from my own actions.  I must know.  I have to.  I can’t stop.

    This is why your words won’t work.  They serve no purpose here.  Don’t waste them on me.

    And I regret nothing.  I live without regrets.  

But the pain.  It’s unbearable.  The pain I was told to avoid.  The shock.  The devastation.  The octopus.  These things could have been avoided.  

But I had to know them.  I had to get acquainted.

    So where does this leave me?  

It leaves me sinking into the mattress of my bed while a loved one sits beside me and watches as I clasp my stomach with one hand and my chest with the other and whisper words so quietly because I fear that my eyes will flood much more than they already are.  I fear my body will shake so violently that it will decide to shake no more.  Give in.  Give out.

    But she places her hand on mine and tells me what I need to hear.  Need to digest.  Need to accept.

    That, of course, these things happened.  That, of course, I fell.  Of course, falling felt so good.  And of course, the ground feels this bad.  Of course, I’m this tattered.  Of course, I’m this tormented.  Of course, I am human.

My emotions have been singed.  My foundation torched.  My heart ravaged.

But I’ll persevere.  As she told me last night, I have no choice.

I have no choice.

I move from the wooden chair I’m seated on to the floor.  I sprawl out and groan.  I bury my face next to an empty pizza box.

   

I don’t envy your situation, one of my friends says.

   

You’re an enabler, the other says.

   

I crawl to the corner of the room.  I toss and I turn, and I turn and I toss.

   

The right decision isn’t the easy one, one of them says.  

   

This is withdrawal, the other says.  This is the first stage of withdrawal.  This is necessary.

   

And I isolate.  In a room with friends I manage to isolate myself.  I dive into the depths of my existence.  I exit it all and search and search.  I sit without breathing or moving or seeing or interacting with this world.  I transcend.

   

You’re going to go, aren’t you? one of them asks.

And I return.  I hear his words.  I hold them.  I feel them out.  Then I nod my head.  

I have to.

   

Then you’ve already lost, he says.

And this hurts.  It leaves its mark.  Add it to the scars scattered over my body.  The ones I forget about till I find myself in the bathroom at night with nothing better to do than gawk at my flesh.

   

But we go.  They won’t let me go alone.  We all go.  I arrive with an army of friends.  And there’s a girl I’ve never met before who sits in the kitchen.  She turns wide eyed as I open the storm door, dumbfounded that so many strange men would enter her house this late at night.

   

But I smile at her.  I introduce myself.  I shake her hand.  Her expression never changes.

   

The Mother tells me that her daughter is upstairs.  That She’s waiting for me.

   

Always waiting for me.

   

So I go.  I go by myself and as I near the stairs my heart pumps with greater and greater intensity and the nerves running down my neck contract and pull with each creaky step I weigh on and my head isn’t so easy to move and my breaths get shorter and shorter even though my lungs fight for more and more air and Her door is ajar and I see Her curled on the bed and it seems so inviting but terror swarms over me and I can think of nothing but running back to the car, back to my house, just running and running, and then all my thoughts just race and bounce and explode, but my feet manage to move forward, and then I’m in Her room.

   

Then I’m on Her bed.

   

Then I’m with Her.

    The octopus.  I get reacquainted with the octopus.  The touch of its suction cups as its arms wrap around my heart.  Squeeze.

    And I die this way.

    The weather has been so appropriate.  Of course it has been.

    Of course.

    And I can’t seem to get things right.  Something falters.  Something always falters.  Either in the execution, or presentation, or motivation.  Something cracks and tears and falls.

    Something dies.

    A little more of me dies.

    So sad.  Always so fucking sad.

    These are the things I tell myself.

I tell myself, things don’t have to turn out this way, dear boy.  Things do not have to be this way.  You can be happy.  You can feel happiness.  Just let it happen.

   
    Why won’t you let it happen?

    My stomach turns over on itself.  It folds back into its own parts.  Over and over.  It kills me.

    There’s not much blood in my head.

    And this is how I die.  This is how it happens.  This is always how it happens.

    Oh well, okay.

    Too many Ativan.  A few too many Ativan.  And the mood changes so suddenly.  The atmosphere alters.  Everything stills.
   
    The hum of the fan.  The pictures on the television.  The smell of the burgers Her Mother is cooking.

    Everything stills.

    And she asks, am I going to die?

    Am I going to die?

    No, I say.  And I feel I’ve disappointed her somehow.  I feel as though I’ve delivered terrible news.  Tragic news.  Her shoulders slouch and her head hangs low.

    After She’s nodded off from her drug induced haze I speak to Her Mother for hours.

    We stand in the kitchen and smoke black cherry flavored cigarettes and talk and talk.  Statistically speaking, you two won’t make it, she tells me.

    I tell her I know.  I know.

    But I still go back upstairs to lay down next to Her.  To watch Her sleep.  To be there.