Drinking from the bottle

Prologue

Despite how much you think you know about addiction, you will never quite understand the pure ache you feel when you see someone crumble right before your eyes, gradually not wanting anything else but that sensation, that buzz. To know that when they wake up they don't think about anything other than destroying themselves, one hit, one swig, one inch of lingering suicide at a time.

Have you ever tried to fix someone who is already dissolving?

Have you ever tried to convince someone that living is more than that clouded memory of yesterday?

You hear a lot these days about talking, about opening up and starting the conversation, see the conversation is effective if you know they can actually understand what is going on. How on earth can you sit there and pretend you're not already talking to a corpse. Bones crunching as they shift in their seat, their eyes drift from left to right paranoid of their own subconsciousness.

Such a waste.

Oh, how I wish we could've seen this sooner, how I dread the nights I ignored the calls and pleading, maybe you would remember who you were underneath the chilling version ahead of me, not even able to take your grip off the bottle in your pocket, that you probably don't realise I've noticed. The scraping of your picked and bloodied nails at the side of the glass. Oh, how I wish we could go back to the days you used to scrape ice off the window sill instead, not worrying about the frost covering every curve of your fingertips; not anticipating how long this conversation is going to last so you can get away from me and pretend none of it happened, drown it out with the burning in your chest from the vodka as it travels down your throat.

Maybe it's not worth my breath.

But, maybe, just maybe, it is.