Day-Drinking

If you're drinking in the morning to get rid of the sadness you feel because you lost someone you loved to something beyond your control, you can always remind yourself that it's not your fault. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it hurts more than the hangover. It's more of a sharp, stabbing pain in the chest versus a throbbing headache, but it's something more to live for.

I don't really know where I'm going with this one.

Whether they're underground or out of town, they're probably not coming back. I mean, they could haunt your bedroom and break some glasses to get your attention. Shattered coffee mugs are never fun to clean up but they could be a sign that they're still there. Postcards that aren't signed or even written on from places you knew they went off to, those are just as haunting.

I've been known to dabble in self-destructive behavior when things don't go my way. Avoiding sobriety was a way of avoiding reality. It still is, when I really need it. I don't really like to drink, though.

There's a sick kind of hope that lingers after something relatively important ends. There's that feeling of "I hope I see them at the grocery store" or "I hope they see me in my car" or "I hope they miss me and give me a late night phone call so I can hang up on them". It's kind of like this thought that comes in and out whenever you're in public. I want them to see how much better off I am without them. When you see them, though, you hide behind the nearest produce stand and you wait for them to walk by. It's when you're not expecting it that they come back.

I didn't like being hungover at that standardized exam I took in the eleventh grade. I didn't like drunkenly calling you and begging for you to talk to me. Maybe that's why I hated being drunk. I hated stumbling. I'm clumsy enough as it is. I'm not proud of anything I did between the months of February and late June.

Sometimes, when you're not blinded by disgusting infatuation and too much gin, you can see a person for what they really are. And then, sometimes, you can write that person off as another mistake. Maybe even a regret. It's moments you remember that make you miss them, little snapshots in time that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Remembering someone's mother and the way they treated you or their annoyingly loud dog and the way it snarled at you every time you walked in their house, or their hardwood floor in their kitchen and the plans you made on their bed while staring at a poster with a line relatively attractive girls in bikinis, these are all just moments. Stupid moments, moments that you have to remember are completely overshadowed by your future without them. They told you that they were taking a plane and they weren't coming back. They lied to get away from you. Sometimes you'll wonder if it was you. Sometimes you'll blame it on yourself. The reality of the situation is that you spent select moments with someone that wasn't right for you. Make a list of all the things you hated about them and read it over a few times. It helps to get rid of any residuals.

I drank way too much and I, in a messy and intoxicated state, called people I didn't even like to discuss some things I don't even remember. I don't like drinking. I also don't like you, and I don't like the moments we shared together, and I don't like the person you are, as a whole. I don't like the way you made me feel. You could go so far as to say that I hate you. Hatred takes too much energy. I just inactively dislike you.

I learned a very valuable lesson about trust and gin and the phone. I got a 99 on that exam. I'm starting college early and I reacquainted myself with the one person who actually understands me. You don't smoke cigarettes anymore. It never would have worked out anyway.