Vienna

Eclipse

     When Max leaves, I wait. It hurts so bad. I know I drove him away. It was my fault.

     When I was 16, and we had just started what I thought was officially dating, I caught him in his car with my friend's head in his lap. I knew it was her immediately because I'd just helped her dye her hair red in the school bathroom. I literally caught them red handed. At the time I felt like I would never be able to move on. After some time, I started to believe it was my fault. We were waiting to have sex until I turned 18, because I wasn't ready, and he told me that people wouldn't understand our relationship and might try to break us up. I should have known he couldn't wait that long.
     If I wasn't so scared and insecure, I wouldn't have made him wait. At first he did, he waited so patiently. I guess he just needed something I couldn't give him yet.
     I asked him why he wanted her. Why a friend of mine? Why somebody else my age? He told me that he didn't mean to hurt me, that one thing lead to another while he was selling her weed and he would never ever do something like this again. I saw a little smirk come up on his face every so often while he explained. I love when he lies because it sounds so much better than the truth.

     I turned 17 and noticed there were condoms in his car. I tried to ignore it and rationalize it at first. He could be preparing, a year ahead of time? I knew I was wrong, though. I knew what was happening, and why he always had one with him. I had to decide if I wanted to be that girlfriend. I didn't want to be. So I let it eat me alive.

     I graduated and turned 18. I started college, in state but further than I wanted to be from Max. We were always fighting then. He was always disappearing. Every night I would hold my stuffed penguin and wonder if he was holding somebody else. I wouldn't wake up for class, and I wouldn't eat for days. I felt like I was losing myself and him at the same time. That's when he decided to move to my college town and get us an apartment. We made a plan, I was going to work part time and go to school part time and he was going to continue his construction work (and other work) from here. I should have known this wasn't just about me. He started urging me to bring him to parties and find clients for him.
     I started to feel tired of work, and school, and of parties and drugs. I was tired of sitting on cheap couches and watching him flash his smile at girls, eyes drooping. I dropped out of college. The Xanax kept me alive for a while, until it almost killed me. I think that was my first overdose. I was alone in the apartment and my heartbeat sped up and slowed down until I couldn't think or remember. I drowned in what I thought was fog inside of the living room. I woke up in the morning on the floor and felt slower and more tired, but I was alive.
     The slow and tired feeling never went away. Neither did the fog. Or the cheating, even after I gave him everything I had on my 18th birthday.

     When I was 19, my mom died.

When I turned 20, I laid in my coffin and closed it. The Xanax tasted so much better than anything else I tried and Max had enough to supply my habit. I stopped eating and the thinner I got the less I mattered. I hoped to wither away into ashes and dust. I stopped working, and I don't remember a lot of details. I snorted so much Xanax my nose was burnt and bleeding. When I swallowed it I was throwing up repeatedly and sobbing on the floor. I had nothing left. Absolutely nothing. And then he left.
     After this particular fight, Max left me with Xanax and some other pills, plus a little alcohol and weed. He told me he would be away for some time. I knew I wouldn't see him again for a while.

     Most of it was a haze, but I really remember this part because I distinctly remember being convinced I was crazy. After a few days of taking Xanax and drinking and taking a little K and passing back and forth between realms, past, present, and future, I decided that there was no way this was real. This was a separate reality I'd created in my head, and everybody else is a character in my story. This meant I was God, and I controlled everything. This pressure crushed me and I ran through everything I had ever done, and how horribly I had messed up. I saw myself as God speaking to myself as a human and I felt so regretful. Sobbing on my knees, begging for God to just end it. To please just let me die. As God, I granted myself the beauty and pleasure of death, and I felt myself ready to pass through. I recognized how I was nothing but a body. Nothing but a heartbeat that just wouldn't stop. I became God and human as one and I felt warmth rushing through me. My heartbeats slowed, and I smiled. It was going to end. I cried and thanked myself for death. What a gift it was to drown. The pain stopped for the first time, when I was about to die. Then he brought it back. He brought me back.
     I remember being so angry that Max came home. I was high out of my mind, and was convinced I was seconds away from dying and he had interrupted me. I know now it was the Ketamine and Xanax and alcohol. Maybe I was going to overdose, maybe I was God, but it's more likely that I was completely hallucinating the whole thing.
     He did everything he could to keep from having to take me to the hospital. He took care of me and watched over me like he was my doctor for days. Afterwards, my brain never felt right again. I still see silver sparkles when I open my eyes in the light. When I'm high it shines like snow in the sun. When I'm sober it's unbearable and gives me a migraine.

So now, at 21, I know this is routine. I know he needs time, and he's angry. I know I really messed up. I know it hurts him more that it was with a girl. I also know that he'll come back. He always does.
     So I snort a Xanax, and I wait. I repeat the process until he comes home. I don't want to feel, so the lines I cut become bigger and bigger. The more I wait, the more I worry about what perfume he'll smell like when he gets home, and if it's more expensive than mine, and how much it will crush me if I see a cherry red lipstick on his neck. Just another reminder that I don't even know where my lipstick is anymore, and my expensive perfume is collecting designer dust.

     I call him every time I take a bump. Maybe if I'm consistent he'll answer. I'm not writing any more until he comes home. Maybe this is my way of taking things into my own hands because I'm spiraling out of my own control. Even though obsessively calling and making threats about what I'll do if he doesn't come home just hurts me and doesn't affect him, I feel like I'm grasping to hold my hand over his heart the same way he does mine. I feel so desperate and pathetic, writing about how sad I am that he left me.

     I hate myself. I hate writing. I hate being alive.

     I want him to come home. I want life to be beautiful again.