All that swelling and cock-dancing. Did you read them? The smorgasbord of Alyssa chapters overflowing with wishy-washy manure scented self righteous pity and vocabulary flexing. 

Cock stroking, feathers standing alert, pinky finger lubed and inserted in the anus. Selfish observations of myself and my handicapped life. 

My pride hitting and missing but never ceasing in its relentless obsession to hit and hit again…

All those flowery words and crippling sentences and empty rhyming bottles of liquid emotion and sticky-sick summer nights where I turned off my air and punished myself in a closed window room. All the anguish and personal betrayal and mind numbingly pathetic day-dreaming. All the palpitations and roller coaster heart songs I assumed were love. And all that love forever bound, as far as my immature capacity can calculate, to vast regions of emotional wastelands, overpopulated with regret. Love and regrets.  Because you cant have one without the other when you are born to my parents and your body has my brain and my blood and my disease. When you are me then you can’t imagine a day of unadulterated and unconditional love without a no-survivors plane crash of regrets.  

   All of that…and yet, sitting here, all these months later, with a chaffed dick, an ashtray overflowing with stale butts, seeds and stems, and a drowning, sinking heart…I can’t help but wonder how I could have handled things differently. It’s actually quite difficult to be regretful about a particular situation when your not even sure what you could have done differently. Maybe my actions were stunted by my inability to see additional  options. Are the blinders off now? In retrospect…what other options were there:  

Run and hide?

Ignore?

Carve out my eyes?

Jam bic pens into my eardrums?

Dig deeper with my dollar store buck knife?

Jump from a higher source?

Forget reading the warning label, ingest with high proof liquid and lay down for an eternal nap?

Or perhaps be more of a man. Stop with the teenage High School games. Look her in the eyes. Tell her how I really feel. No…I mean how I really feel.

Could I have been capable of telling her how I really felt about her?

Or maybe I did all the right things and the end result is in everyone’s best interest. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am right. I mean, does it really matter who predicts the end of the world when the end of the world eventually comes?    

I miss her. Sincerely. There is no debating the depression of my emotional dysfunctions. My smiles when I am suffocating. My laughs when I am alone, deprived and starving for affection. I am a rat stuck in a mouse trap. Spine snapped and legs twitching. Mind reeling with the scents of exotic cheeses just out of reach.

All that swollen speak and dedication I spewed out. I pretended I was playing to your entertainment. That I was exaggerating the events of my otherwise normal life for dramas sake. That you, dear reader, were the cause of my effect. But the truth is, it was always the truth.

I believed I honestly wanted to help her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to be a hero and a savior and a husband and a father for her. I wanted everything that I always knew I couldn’t have because I am not capable. For her. I wanted to feel things others have claimed to feel. I wanted to be normal for once. I wanted to join the crowd. I wanted to believe and pray and high five and wink and learn a secret handshake and eat onions on pizza and not pick my nose and stop masturbating three times a day and care about the environment and take care of my responsibilities. For her.    

Like an imp yearning for the skill set of a deity, I wanted and  I wanted and I wanted.

All that misguided emotion. Exchanged fluids with strangers. Wasted money and forgotten time and all those insertions and indiscretions and thefts and avoidances and broken laws.

I actually cried. I drank more heavily than usual. I dug that dull knife repeatedly into my wrist and I stared through my watery lenses as the blood colored the bath water. The scars will never completely heal. Now I wear long sleeved shirts and I avoid looking at the liquor store when I drive by and I don’t go out on my balcony to smoke anymore because sometimes, if the wind is blowing just right, it picks up the faintest trace of her fragrant skin and it carries it to straight to my nostrils. Even though she is no longer here.

And it all starts all over again. All of it. And yet…   

She’s never coming back.

NEVER.

It’s not like before when it was just a matter of time. When I checked off the days on my calendar like a greedy kid anticipating Christmas morning. No, now she is gone forever. I will never see her again. Get it? I will never touch her. I will never talk to her. I will never. Her. Never.  

My best friend. My companion. My confidant. My favorite person in the world. My neighbor and her magnificent daughter. The most beautiful woman I have ever had the pleasure of spending time with. The woman who completely defined the word sexy for me. Those eyes. That hair. The sense of humor. The skin. The scent. The breasts. The laugh. The neck. The stomach. The ears.. The vocal chords. The feet. The style. The unimaginable way I felt every time she crossed the threshold of my apartment. The way my taste buds danced when I put my lips to her flesh. The way my entire being felt at ease and at home, whenever she was around.

I’ll never have that again. And it hurts.

All that time I spent obsessing and contemplating. The naked back massage and passed out foot rubs. All the alcohol runs. All the empty cans and bottles. The broken glass. All the text messages and late night knocks on the door. All the card games and downloaded songs. The lap-dances and stolen kisses. Her singing and her peeing with the door open and the pads of her feet always dirty and her loving extra cheese and extra sauce and her loving all kinds of music and her. And her. And her. And absolutely everything about her. 

All the emptiness. Now.

I wake up sometimes and don’t know what to do. I wander around my apartment and stare at things that I recall her having interactions with. I stare at the remote control that I know she touched. I stare at the chair she used to sit in. I stare at the hallway she walked through. The sink she washed her hands in. The bottle she drank out of that I can never throw away. 

I don’t even know what love is but I do know that what I felt…that what I feel for her is as close as I’ll ever come. As close as I ever care to come.

I’ve heard it said that it is better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all. But what if the one you loved and lost is the only one you will ever love?

I think I would prefer to go the Joel Barish route and have her erased from my memory all together. Then at least I wouldn’t know why I felt so miserable and I could spend my days contemplating how to live rather than how to die.

In the end, I’m happy she is gone because I know I could never bring her happiness. And I like to think that maybe one day someone will. Maybe someone else will feel about her the way that I do. Maybe someone will not take advantage of her and someone will guide her and counsel her and help her become the magnificent individual that she has the capability of being.   

I like to think that.