When you wake up next to the same person every day, you start to feel numb, a comfortable void of vocal expressions, of having to constantly remind each other why you’re together. You don’t have to fight to save things and you stop considering the possibility that one day, they just won’t love you anymore. I didn’t make it easy to love me; I’m not extraordinarily sweet, or socially talented. I don’t come with an abundance of trust or care. I’m often depressed and misanthropic and completely awkward around other human beings. For a while though he loved me. He held me tight and made me feel anchored, to this planet, to this place. I was numb until I had to wake up alone. After that first night, after you sit in the silence of your own home, and you listen to the space they left, you feel the throbbing of the place on the bed where their body used to warm, where their chest used to rise and fall next to your own, after that, you never want to feel alone again, so you make sure you don’t. When I was little, when everyone was little, they were taught that drugs were bad and that you only share a bed with someone you love, after you grow up and get married. I wanted to get married; I wanted the big wedding and the ring. I wanted the house and the man to come home to me, I wanted a family, and something concrete to show the world I was worth something, that there was something I could do, and be good at. I never wanted to do drugs, I never wanted to lean over a bathroom stall and feel my nose separate from the rest of my body, I never wanted to shake on a balcony and watch cars swarm around my head, feel blood run down the center of my arm. I never wanted the taste of vomit and bile to be ever present inside of my mouth. Love is not a blessing, because I don’t care what any book or movie tells you, it never lasts forever. The people you fall in love are not bound to you. Nothing is permanent and you can’t force it stay, regardless of how much you need it.

It’s raining tonight. Not hard enough to shake my brain loose from my body and slam me to sleep, but not light enough to fall softly into a bath and never come up for air. Just enough for the shakes in my fingers to be visible underneath a light black long sleeve shirt, for the cigarette to twitch between my lips. I think about suicide often, a sort of daydream that stays present in my head. It floats around with me all day, just dangling above my eyes, reminding me that I am miserable. I want to die, honestly. I want to have the courage to slip away from this planet gently, fall of somewhere safe. Perhaps Pluto, considering it’s not really a planet anymore, and I don’t really feel like a person. We could fit well together, Pluto and me. I always pictured Pluto purple, the color of play dough, or Barney. Which is ridiculous and probably retarded, but it’s sort of comforting, like out of all the planets, Pluto just didn’t want to be the same, so he picked a random color and then decided to f*** being a planet, and f*** being a star, and f*** being a moon. Pluto is a bad a**. I spend too much time thinking these things, things that don’t really matter. Things no one will ever care about. I have friends, or I did, before I disappeared and didn’t answer phone calls. Sometimes one will stop by, Jemma, mostly. Her red lipstick pressed against my mirror after finding me passed out of the toilet. I should be grateful, sometimes, she feeds my cat. Mostly I just want her to go away, to fade out like everyone else.



I like the rain, I like the feel of water against my too pale skin, similar to sweat, similar to the feel of his fingertips. The brush of his lips, the pulse of his skin on mine. We were passionate once, before flames flickered out of me, and I stopped caring. Before the cocoon of my mental condition hardened over me and the thought of another person around me became crippling. Now I would kill for him to be here, to replace the drunken man in my bed, the stench of him, the clothes piled in front of my door, the regret skimming the surface air all around me. Every night is the same now, because I cannot sleep in the space. I cannot sleep in this void.