I Don't Keep Promises Anymore

Broken Promise

“You promised!” she yells at the top of her lungs.

Her voice so loud it makes my ears ring. Her words bouncing off the thin walls in this small empty room. Well empty except for her and me and this half deflated air mattress I’m lying on.

“You promised me Mikey!”

I can hear it don’t think I can’t. How could I not hear that crack in her voice and those sobs building up in her throat?

I can’t move voluntarily other than blink my eyes, swallow and breathe. I wonder what she thinks I’m thinking about. I bet she thinks all that runs through my mind is heroin, heroin, and more heroin. And that’s true for most of the time, but the small amount of time I’m not thinking about heroin . . . I’m thinking about her and that makes me want to do more heroin.

“God damn it!” she screams and then there’s a crash that makes me snap out of my trance. I flip over and sit up to see she has kicked a trash can across the room slamming it against the wall and it hitting the floor again. Yeah I forgot I had that too.

“Oh now you’re up! Mikey, Mikey how could you? How could you do this to yourself? You were doing so good! You were clean for a week what happened?”

I don’t say anything.

“Look at me!”

I don’t look at her.

She starts to choke up as she nearly climbs onto my lap. She’s crying so much and I know I’m a worthless piece of shit, because this sad crumpling woman exists because of me. She’s squatting in front of me and grabs my face in her too hot hands and makes me look at her. The heat her hands give off burns my cold thin face, but I don’t dare move.

“Look at me,” she blubbers.

And I do. She shouldn’t look like this. She used to be so lively and happy, always smiling. Her blonde hair framing that gorgeous face, her green eyes were always so bright and full of wonder. Those eyes are what drew me in four years ago. . . But now her blonde hair looks like she hasn’t washed it in a few days, her eyes are full of tears, face is red and puffy and snot dribbles out of her nose down her top lip.

“When we started dating you told me,” she starts. “That when you made a promise you’d never break it and that’s always been true. So why now, why start breaking promises now?”

Oh I don’t know maybe because I’m addicted to heroin and you can’t trust a drug addict.

“Why won’t you say anything to me,” she nearly whispers.

I shake my head ever so slightly and close my eyes.

“No, you’re gonna look at me.”

I feel her thumbs on my eyelids gently and she pushes them up. Her hands go to the sides of my neck.

“God, you’re so cold. . . I’m not giving up on you,” she says.

For the first time I speak. My voice comes out gruff and harsh and I know it wasn’t something she expected to come out of my mouth.

“You should,” I say.

Oh her hands are burning my neck so.

“No!” she nearly yells. “Just because you find no problem with being selfish does not mean that I will be.”

I take a breath. My high is wearing off and I need her to leave so that I can take care of business. I can’t have her seeing me do it that’s pushing it too far.

“I love you Michael.”

“Don’t say that,” it comes out plain.

Her face scrunches up. “No I will say it. I love you Michael Gene Thomas and nothing is going to stop me from loving you. Nothing’s going to stop me from caring about you and trying to help you.”

“I don’t want your help!” I don’t yell, but my voice does rise because I’m getting impatient and she’s starting to piss me off. “I don’t want you caring about me or loving me.”

“You can’t change how I feel. I can’t just drop you after four years.”

“You better try then.”

I take her wrists in both my hands and remove them from my neck placing them in her lap.

“You need to leave.”

“Why? So you can shoot up more of that shit into your body!?” she screams. “I’m not leaving unless you come with me.”

I can’t deal with this! I only stayed clean for a week because I can’t deal with my demons. So instead of confronting these demons I hide from them with drugs. I’m invisible when I can’t think about all of the pain I’ve caused everyone, so why the hell does she keep coming back to remind me? Doesn’t she know? Doesn’t she get it, that I love heroin more than her. Why can’t she leave me and my new love alone?

I know this is going to break her because it breaks me the moment it comes to mind, but I say it anyway.

“What if I don’t love you anymore?” I ask then to make matters worse I continue talking because I know it’s the only way to make her leave. “What if I told you that you were wasting your time because I don’t want anything else to do with you? And if I told you that I’ve fallen out of love with you what would you do or say then? Are you that desperate that you’ll cling to save a life of a drug addict that doesn’t love you anymore? If that’s the case, then I’m not the one that needs help, it’s you.”

She stares at me and I swear I hear her heart shatter underneath her perky bosom and cage-like ribs.

I stand and instantly feel I’ll fall, but I have to look strong in front of her to make my point, to show I don’t need her. She looks so small from up here. And I know out of all of the years of the small mistakes, to this eight month long addiction she’s stuck it all out and this, this is what finally destroys her.

“Is- is that how you truly feel?” she says hardly audible at all.

She’s staring far into the corner of the room.

I nod even though I know she can’t hear my head movement because I don’t want her to hear the seal of my lie.

She looks up at me and I’m twitching, fingers tapping against my jeans out of agitation. I start gnawing on my lip.

“It’s true,” she whispers. New tears fill those green doe eyes and spill over at the brim of the lids.

She rises and faces me. Her face is so red and a look of disgust and resentment slowly appears onto her face.

That’s when her hand slaps me across the face leaving a burn different from the heat and she strides over to the front door. She puts her hand on the door knob, but before she opens it to leave she looks at me and spits out, “fuck you.”

With that she’s out on the other side of the slammed shut door.

So without further ado I pick up the air mattress and move it aside, grab my smoking utensils and fly on to dreamland.
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