Monday, April 30, 2012

The first step to recovery is... well, don't start.


So I guess she’s gone.

She’s just… gone.

Just like that.

Fucking gone.

As in missing, to be had no more, to be found but naught, goddamn motherfucking gone.

I keep diving into old dreams, tearing frantically at old sutures with old points, looking for her just like I used to.  Only now, no beautiful rush of red blood and memories.  Now I come up from each shallow dive coughing, I find nothing but nothing.  Like… air.  

So I tie up the past so it won’t get away and I poke and prod at it, again and again, here, there, everywhere, anywhere, searching for that old feeling, for one last go.  Nothing.  Air bubbles.  A drop or two of old blood maybe, not red like it used to be, more like a rusty brown.  Mostly, the stinging pain reminding me that she’s gone, and I missed her.
I missed... I missed... I missed her...

I missed her like a hole in the head.
 
For every action there is a reaction. For every high, there is a low.
 
And so it was with her.
 
There’s a chill I can’t shake.  The sickly sweat that lays on my skin the way I want to lay on hers only sends the cold deeper.  My body aches, still aches from the moment she was torn out of it. Ripped from my spine, she had to unwrap herself from each individual vertebrae, through each fingertip, uncurl herself from every tendon, loosen herself from every joint. She grabbed at my heart as she left me, squeezing it apart into all it’s separate chambers and ventricles and arteries, so I felt a dozen different pangs with every scattered, rhythm-less beat. She clutched wildly at my lungs, tearing holes into them, separating the fibers so every breath would be labored and...
...pointless.
 
I felt positively ill without her. I couldn’t eat, the idea of letting anything that wasn’t her that close to me turned my stomach. I tried once or twice, but my body rejected the introduction of anything un-Imogene so violently I haven’t tried again.
 
 She drained my heart and made a spade… there’s still traces of her in my veins…

It’s like she fled my bones to crawl through my skin.  My flesh itself wants to just finish expelling her but no whining or pulling, thrashing or pounding will make her stop.  No threats or cajoling. No distractions, no excuses, no escape, no relief.

Because… no Imogene.
 
Imogene was always beautiful, from every angle, at any distance, in spite of any veil or variable you could impose. But where she really shone was at night.  It was like the whole world was still out of reverence for her beauty. The moon knew better than to compete.  The stars hid. She shone from the inside out, illuminating everything just by existing. The day she left, the day I lost her, was daytime indeed.  The sun stood still, at its highest point in the sky. The garish light poured over me, exposing the hollowed circles, sallow skin, high-lighting the way my bones protruded. Showcasing me for what I am, a worthless, detoxing junkie.
 
I don’t know if I’m too weak to seek shelter or if it’s just because I don’t give a FUCK, but I’ve been laying here ever since. Letting the sun bleach what’s left of me, turning all the grotesque proof of her absence into a blaring warning to never, ever, under any circumstances let yourself need something.
 
Lifeless. Listless. And empty, empty, empty.
 
Whatever.  Fuck it.  I just don’t care.  I was pathetic before I had her.  There’s no reason I shouldn’t be pathetic now.

Addiction is a classifiable disease.

If that girl had a flaw, it was me.

I made her weak.

I knew I was doing it but I couldn’t help it.  Anything I could do, anything I had to to keep her from leaving.  Anything necessary to keep her here, with me. 

I tricked her. I trapped her. I drugged her. I lied.

Her eyes flashed with righteous anger when she was mad.  They flooded with tears when she was heartbroken. And the shine... God Almighty, they shone, shone, shone with love.  And I did it all.  I don’t even know if I loved her anymore towards the end, but fuck almighty I needed her. 

Rehab is a bedtime story.



Nothing was ever enough with her.

If I was with her I wanted her kiss.  If she kissed me I wanted her tongue.  If I tasted it I wanted her hands. If I felt them I wanted the full length of her body, reckless and warm, pressed against every inch of mine.

I wanted to soak her up like sunshine.

I wanted to wrap myself in her like cashmere.

I wanted to drink her like water.

                  …and then, inevitably, I wanted to drown.

Relapse is statistically inevitable.


The only reason I ever sleep anymore is to see her face again.

To hear her voice again.

To have her look at me the way she used to.

Tonight we blinded heaven itself and we stole from all the angels. We took what we wanted from whomever we pleased.

I used the moon to light her silhouette, she used the stars to light her cigarette.

There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for her, except the one thing she asked.

I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, and when I die of this broken heart I’ll die knowing I never really betrayed her.

 I<3YOU(the remix)



And did I want her? Well yes. And did I feel her? God yes. Everything about her was so YES!fuckingYES! I think the worst part about it all is how EASY she was how READY she was to slake my thirst and feed my hunger and GOD ALMIGHTY want take have want take have want take have I wanted to VIOLATE and PROTECT her all at once I wanted to KILL her so I could bring her back to LIFE I wanted to be the only thing she ever knew about the good and the evil and the world I wanted to be her heartbeat and her tears I WANTED TO WORK MY WAY INTO HER mind and TAKE HOLD OF HER thoughts I want I want I want I want her IMOGENE my IMOGENE my BEGINNING and my END light of my soul my heaven my hell my water my earth oh Imogene want me take me have me LOVE ME NEED ME IMOGENE IMOGENE can’t you hear me SCREAMING can you hear me crying out for you can’t you FEEL ME reaching you’re everything I want out of anything I bleed for you my reason for waking my reason for being my reason for reason GOD I LOVED HER Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end Imogene my Imogene my beginning my end my want my wish my world my life my death my all my everything MINE
IMOGENE- 
I love you so very much, from every corner and empty room of my heart that’s waiting to be filled with you.




We ran many circles during the course of what we were, each one it seems beginning and ending in my obsession with her.

Her voice or her smile, her tears, her touch, her taste, her oh…

I would spend all day basking in the memory of the way her mouth tasted, turning each tiny detail of it over and over in my own, tonguing every discrepancy in flavor. I’d roll it around like fine wine, savoring the taste of her, just to be surprised when I kissed her again that night.  Every time I’d coax her lips open the sheer fucking YES of it all overwhelmed me to the point I had to break contact. Maybe it was to regain some of my senses.  Maybe it was to catch my breath. Maybe it had something to do with the way she looked in that split second; lowered lashes and face in slight pursuit of mine, those lips pursed and flushed and full of excitement. Electric with it. Ripe and raw with the hot blood that rushed up to meet me. 

Yeah, I excited her. With the volumes of ‘what the fuck?’ I could write about how it all turned out, at least I had that. Obsession is dangerous, and danger is exciting, what can I say?

But me… I needed that touch that taste that feeling of her heartbeat pressed right up against mine, the only barrier between our two life forces being the fragile, stupid skin we had to contend with. The flimsy sheet of necessity standing in the way of us getting any closer.

I starved for her daily. I shook with the need of her. Too many seconds without her and I would collapse in defeat, a sunflower less the sun.

As soon as I met her I wanted her.  I knew that much.  I may have known her name, I don’t remember. I may have known where we were and what we talked about, but probably not.  What I knew was that face was going to be the absolute death of me, and that voice the sound I would die to. Happily, too. The noise she made with her curious little sighs resonated with my soul, a harmony of chords never before struck in the entire history of music.  Like an artist to his muse, I was inexplicably drawn to her.  I had to have her. 

And I did.

And I didn’t have her so much as take her, and I didn’t take her so much as possess her.  I wanted to melt myself into something so sweet she couldn’t help but lap it up and swallow it down, every last drop. I wanted to slip into her mouth and slide down her throat and fill every hollow space… in her thoughts and her dreams, in her past and her future. In her body. In her soul. I wanted to lodge myself securely in whatever part of her brain it was that made her her, to become engrained in everything she was and flush out everything I wasn’t.  I wanted to swim through her like platelets and go wherever I pleased.

And one day, I stopped answering the phone. Just like that.  Maybe I had too many open sores from letting her in, so I needed the new pain of healing them.  I honestly don’t know. To this day, every time a suture tears (there are many) and a hot red drop of blood escapes, I can feel the warmth of her fire. In fact, I rip them frequently, just to allow myself one little drop. Nobody could say I didn’t love that girl enough.  Nobody could say I didn’t want her enough.  I allowed to her to infect me, I cut into my veins and my heart so she could infiltrate me faster, I breathed her in so the sickly poison of her allure could expand in my lungs like smoke.  That love took everything I had, so now I lay day in and day out, very nearly comatose. Ripping sutures one at a time, to keep myself in limbo, that almost-gone-but-not-quite-yet state of total peace. A stitch, a drop, a self-regulated dose of morphine. A fraction of a milliliter of Imogene.

My Imogene.

I’ll always be addicted to her. I always have been, I see no reason to stop now. And when I want her so bad I think I might die, I find new and different ways to get high off her. 

Imogene, Imogene.

My beginning and my end.