Almost everyone at the wedding is married. The token single man does a problematic job in a problematic country, and when I ask if that makes him feel weird he says he’s only there for the money, which somehow makes it worse. A man who got married four weeks ago gets me a drink and tells me I’m wonderful and touches my lower back. He says I seem cold and I says that’s probably because he’s married and he gets annoyed. I know his wife and I feel very sad.
As the venue closes down I squat on the floor outside between a drunk girl and her friend and her fiancé and I help tie the straps on her shoes, and then we go to the pub around the corner and I walk into the bathroom and I lean against the wall in the cubicle and I cry so hard that I can barely see the screen of my phone and I call the last man I loved in this city, and I leave out the back entrance without saying goodbye, and I sob all the way to the station, and I’m weeping so intensely on the platform that a girl comes up to me and all I can say is ‘everyone is getting married’, and she bends down to where I am sitting on the dirty floor, in my expensive suit, and gives me a hug.
On the walk from the station I wonder what it might feel like to lie down in the slick-black street in front of traffic. But I keep going. I wonder if you can die from loneliness. I wonder how much of being alive is desire, and how much is habit.
Some days I go down so low I can taste scorched earth. In times like these there’s nothing to do but disappear from view, go underground, lick the grooves of salt out of your wounds.
In times like these the only people I can let in are those who know I’m being both facetious and truthful when I say perhaps if I stand in this street long enough I’ll get hit by the garbage truck. People who reply with yes I’ve been thinking recently it might be nice to have a little coma, no long term effects, no bed sores, just a bit of peace and a short stay in a clinic. Or, I’ve been crying so hard I had to get emergency botox. Or, call me if you feel like dying. Or, it wasn’t your fault. Or, you didn’t deserve it. Or, I love you I love you I love you.
Remember I love you.
Text me when you get home.
It’s over it’s over it’s over - it’s not over - it’s over it’s over. You tell yourself it’s some star-crossed shit, even when that cruelty comes, so hot and fast and vicious it makes you gasp. When the shock subsides your head’s so scrambled you wonder if maybe you deserved it. Maybe you did, existing as you do.
There was a time in my life when I made a habit of begging my way into the ring, itching for a round against the ropes. Cruelty almost looks like kindness, if you squint your eyes and stare directly at the sun. Something fresh and clean about that sharp stab of viciousness, like licking the edge of a blade. Neat knife, paper-cut slice, palms pressed in a blood pact. There she is, such an eager participant in her own undoing. Patterns learnt at bended knee on both sides; what brought us together tore us apart. How many powerful women I know have been brought low trying to make someone love them back.
Currents of pain flicker through my body, a despair so intense it’s like a physical wound. I feel like I’m dying, or like I want to die, it’s hard to see the line between. A familiar feeling, my old friend, coaxing me to the edge. Who could love a woman with so much darkness? I say I’m sitting at the bottom of the pool but I don’t even know where it ends, sinking gently into the black, arms stretched out like a martyr. What else did you expect from a woman so obsessed with salvation, both yours and my own? Even now I still want to be consumed, vengeful gods and wicked fates, anything for a life less ordinary.
But masochism doesn’t work the way it used to; I’ve grown accustomed to a softer life. I don’t want this, anymore. I want comfort, I want stability, I want kindness. I want a hand reaching for mine in the dark. And yet there it is, the long shadow. Pain and pleasure, two sides of the same coin, currency pressed into your eyelids in payment for the ferryman.
Bad things happen. Worse things happen. Despair, melancholy, tristesse, heartbreak, call it what you want, can’t get out of bed can’t breathe can’t sleep everything hurts. Even on the best days it’s still always just below the surface, a rhythmic thump I know as well as my own heartbeat.
When the end comes, I want to be able to say I did, I did, I did, I lived. I rode every train to the end of the line. I sat front row in the gold room, chandeliers glittering in the glow. I told people I loved them, even when it cost me. I woke up glad enough times to make up for all the times I didn't want to wake up at all.
I don’t know where to put all this hunger, all this hope. What am I doing but writing my yearning into the universe, words knit among the stars? Forgive me, it’s my first time being alive. Forgive me this human pain, this fallibility, this haunted house. All I ever wanted was to be understood; the most simple and most complicated thing of all.