Twenty Years Of Insomnia

You fucking ran away, like you always do, covering your own arse at the expense of everyone else. I can't believe I thought for just that one moment that you'd changed; that this time was different.

It's three in the morning, and I'm washing my hands in the bathroom. I splash water on my face and watch my reflection in the filthy mirror. It's not enough. It's never enough. I can't get clean. I can't wash the filth off my skin. The orange glow of the light flickers with the dying bulb, the steady hum of the light broken by a sound that I would imagine a computer would make if it could blink.

I can see my bed behind me in the mirror, through the open bathroom door. It's a state: pillows and blankets thrown everywhere, but it's unslept in. God knows I've tried for decades to get to sleep, but the insomnia comes back every night and I'm here, at the mirror again, screaming at the stick insect in the glass to fix what went wrong.

The light flickers again, and suddenly, I'm there. I'm in a service station bathroom in Heaven knows where and the light is flickering and all I can see is my reflection.

But it isn't me, it's you.

It's you who can't sleep at three in the morning and you trying desperately to get clean and you staring into your bug eyes in the mirror trying to find some meaning in the wreck you've become. And sometimes, I wonder if it's the drugs the Doctor has me on, trying to give me some kind of closure... And sometimes I wonder if you really are standing at the service station bathroom mirror at three in the morning...

I'll admit, I've tried my best to forget you. Erase you from my memory, like I did from my phone book and purge my brain of your face like I burnt all those pictures. But sometimes, just sometimes, I'll be sitting on the train, or at my desk at work, or running on the treadmill at the gymn and I'll breathe in the scent of you.

You smell like cheap aftershave, ciggarette smoke and hormones. I'd love to say I hate that rancid stench, but I don't, it's one of those things you're embarassed to have to live with. I don't know when it happens or why, but it does, just when I think I've forgotten you.

Does it hurt you? Does it hurt you to know about this train crash you've left behind? Does it hurt you to know that I can't live anymore? To know that you've broken me? All that happiness and innocence you stole away, does it haunt your thoughts at night, when there's no-one left but you and a bottle of vodka someone left behind?

I hope you're thinking of me, drunk out of my mind and getting my eyes fucked out of my brain when the train wheels clatter and you think it'll go away if you travel just that little bit further. I hope you think of me with a mohawk and thong when you masturbate and feel ashamed of what you've left in your wake. I hope you keep that one pair of plain, white underwear in the pocket of your leather jacket and burn with guilt when your fingers brush them as you reach for your wallet.

At first, after you'd left, and I could still sleep on those occasional nights when I'd fallen asleep pounding at my pillows and screaming blue murder, I'd dream about you.

I'd dream you were standing on the pavement, right beneath my window and watching my pitch silhouette pace back and forth on the blind, cursing the high Heavens for your birth. And you'd shed a solitary tear under the stars and it would fall to the grey stones of the pavement in silence. And I'd never know you were there. And you'd slip away into the night.

And when I awoke, I'd rush to the window in hope, but you were never there to greet me. And sometimes, I'd curse myself for being too late to catch you... But now I don't sleep and I don't dream, and when I look up at the night sky, I see nothing but the faint outlines of clouds and a stray, grey moonbeam.

Because the hardest thing for me to admit, is that after everything you did that I swore I'd never forgive you for, that I swore had changed me at the bones, I'd forgive you in a heartbeat. If I could see your face, you'd break my granite soul. I still love you, in ways I doubt I'll ever understand; in ways I doubt I'll ever love anyone else. Sure, I've tried getting back in the circuit; back in the game, but all it ever winds up being is sex and hurt and need.

But the worst part is, I'm still holding out for that ending. An ending I can't fucking well have because you did the worst, most spirit breaking, heart wrenching, soul stealing thing your mind could ever have concieved, and that's the one thing that I could never forgive you for, not in this life or the next.

You fucking well died.