Alcohol Brings Numbness

There was a point where I just stopped feeling, you know? A point where all the fighting had just gotten to my brain. A point where I had to separate my emotions from what was happening. There was once a point where I had put her in this same situation. I never knew how great it felt to just feel nothing at all.

“Don’t you care that we fight all the time?” I could see the desperation in her face, but I couldn’t let that touch my heart anymore. I meant so much to her now, more than she had ever meant to me.

“It’s whatever,” I replied, as if she hadn’t done anything to me.

“Whatever? What-” she cut off her sentence to wipe the tears streaming down her face. “How can you say that? What happened to your heart? What happened to your passion?”

“It doesn’t mean a thing now. You can’t get back to that point, dear.” I looked at my wife’s face and felt nothing towards her. No sympathy, no happiness, no passion, no love anymore. I felt indifferent to her. It didn’t matter if she walked out that door or if she stayed.

I know that if she stayed we would work something out and if she walked out that door I wouldn’t miss the fighting. There’s nothing to our relationship anymore, nothing to every memory because I couldn’t allow myself to feel for her. She would just cut me out in the end, like she always did.

“Michael! Are you even fucking listening to me?” I nodded, lying straight to her. That was the great thing about feeling nothing, you didn’t have to feel bad for a lie. She scoffed at me and screamed, “You’re so lost in your mind and whole sea of feelings for me that you aren’t even paying attention! I know if I walked out this door that you would run after me, like you always do. Maybe that’s not enough anymore, maybe I won’t come back this time.”

“Try me.” A simple statement, enough to make her believe I didn’t care. “You have it wrong. I didn’t chase you last time. You were the one that came to my door, pleading to have me back.” There was a time when I would have said yes, but I promised myself never again.

The anger was coming back, the feelings were trying to wrap around me and take me out. I grabbed the neck of the bottle and swigged some more down. The immediate effects of numbness felt better. I didn’t have to feel anything ever as long as I had my liquor.

My wife swiped the bottle from my hands and threw it to the ground, allowing the glass to shatter and the alcohol to splatter. “Would you just try to have a conversation with me without being drunk? You don’t see what that stuff does to you, but I do. I look into your eyes and all I see is a sea of alcohol and emptiness. Can’t you just try to feel for me?”

“I tried that.” The calmness of the liquor allowed me to state things, rather than yell or whimper out my words.

“I’m leaving, Michael. You’re going to be sorry in the morning.” With those words my wife took off out of the door with luggage she had prepacked. According to her, she kept it packed for business, but she really kept it packed because she planned on leaving me regardless.

A couple hours had passed before I passed out on the couch. I wouldn’t wake up again the morning because of my high alcohol intake levels. Instead, I was taken up into the clouds where I would always feel indifferent. It was a great place here. For eternity, I could lose all emotion and have numbness overtake me.