Circling the Drain

Let's not get off on the wrong foot on the first impression, I'm going to break the forth wall here once in awhile.  It's the only way I think that I can get to the point of things in this situation.  I've been in a relationship with this girl for what seems like forever.  We're committed.  We're engaged.  We're soon to be married.  I'm going to do my best to keep this as "Alcoholic's Anonymous" as possible.  Being something of an intellectual I'm going to refer to the other people by variables.  My fiance (from here on) is going to be X and I'll assign the others as they become necessary.  Me, on the other hand, I'm going to reveal myself periodically.

For starters, I'm twenty-three and apparently the world believes that is way too young to settle-down in life.  I was never really a lucky person growing up and I never found luck to be a friend.  Luck was that girl in grade school that would occasionally bat her eyelashes in my direction when no one else was looking, but the second that a set of eyes joined in, the cold shoulder was all I was able to see.  Harsh reality, but when that's all you ever get, that's what you get used to.

I met X at a college mixer.  Free beer and shots paired well with loose company, not the music.  I was drug across the great room by a friend from class her name is...um... T.  She introduced me to X.  X was beautiful, not by today's standards mind you, but in that classic Victorian era mixed with turn-of-the-century Hollywood starlets kind of way.  She was about half a case deep in intoxication and was making all the moves for me.

We left the party together and negligently drove across town to the after party.  A few naked laps in the pool later, we were announcing our uninhibited love for each other.  We sobered up and I ended up at her place.  She had a less-than functional efficiency that was furnished with a mattress on the floor that was made with high quality linens that cost more than the bed. We passed out in the daylight of youthful vitality only to wake up two years later in midlife relationship purgatory.

Ted

Its really hard to look out of a window that's caked with filth.  Thats ok, that's pretty much how I see what's out there anyway.  I'm what you could call a true romantic, seeing through the bullshit that most people put out there to make them look better in polite society.  I'm a man in the modern world with the Great Depression mentality.  I smoke.  I drink.  I rarely hold my tongue when I feel like silence is a crime.  Iv'e always been that way.  I can't deconstruct my mind on a focused-enough level to figure me out.


I forced myself to figure all things in life in at least some fractal way.  Bending the threads of various subjects to make sense of them so that I could walk into any situation and not be made a fool.  I remember a time in my less formable years when I was at an event on the campus of Johns Hopkins University when a rather annoying gentlemen with sunken eyes hidden behind hazy glasses approached me and posed a question I didn't have the slightest clue on how to form an answer.  He peered up briefly from his scotch and asked me if I knew my own origin story, my own personal genesis.  I was left cold, my heels sinking into the souls of my boots.


Its been since that moment where I became something of a recluse.  Only leaving my apartment for the bare essentials.  I have been researching various methods of meditation and and pyco-reactive drugs to rebuild myself from scratch.  I was trying to ask that anonymous prick's question.  I'm in minute twenty-five of a DMT fit and I am no closer to the shit I'm looking for.

Troubled Renaissance

It went away, that feeling in the darkest region of my stomach. I can't find the good in people anymore. I used to be one of those people who walk around with a halo made of silver permanently affixed to my skull.  Those days are long past now, I haven't left my apartment in two weeks. I haven't seen natural light in more than a month.  Come to think of it, I haven't really seen myself in over a year. Which is pretty sad to think about. The mirror in my bathroom shattered (well, actually, I shattered it in one of my manic sessions) the shards still litter the sink basin and floor. I don't go in there without shoes.

The last social event I can remember was the coffee shop reading.  A stereotypical marathon of burnt coffee smell and over-priced entertainment.  I was on the bill though, reading from my latest memoir.  A 673 page piece of filth, self indulgent shit.  Some critics compared it to a "sunny self help manual"... Like I said shit.  That's when the whole life is beautiful thing was providing a steady cash flow.

The money didn't really go to anything productive; rent, smokes, and a large supply of double malt scotch.  I'm down to my last bottle. I'm scared that I will be forced to return into the world to replenish my habit... My disease.