my heart || ✓

| stay with me

"i am finding out that maybe i was wrong, that i've fallen down, and i can't do this alone; stay with me, this is what i need, please?..."

-

It had been only moments ago — only long, unbearable moments — when I had felt so full of everything.

So full, so overwhelmed with life and feelings crowding my restless mind. I had spoken about this to Hayley once. My tired head filled to the edges with invasive, unwelcome thoughts — suffocating feelings roaring loudly inside of my pain-filled chest. I had told her of it, to an extent, soft red patches decorating my cheeks along with the few tears I was unable to hold back.

And she had cried, too, as she told me how she felt for me, how she hurt for me, how she wished it all away. But we both knew that was all she could really do for me: listen to me and pity me and wish for better days.

And then, still suffering through the overwhelming chaos, I had wished it all away, wished for a single moment of calm in my screaming mind, wished for all of the suffering to leave my aching skin and bones. And I stared at her, and I felt too much, and I wished and I wished it would just. . . leave me. Let me be. And, what do I know, it did.

It all did. It left, along with every other feeling and thought I had once been privileged enough to struggle with. Hayley walked down the aisle in a gorgeous white dress towards a man who was not me, and every single thing inside of me flooded my mind for a few deadly seconds before it all left me.

It left me. She left me — not that I'd ever had her.

And now, I am empty.

-

I am, aren't I? Empty. I can feel that pool of nothingness spreading through me like the disease I had once felt for her: love. It's a funny feeling, nothing. It's worse than love — unrequited, at that. It's worse than all of it.

I am empty, and so I lie aimlessly on my cold bed with wet, slow-blinking eyes and a stomach just like me.

I am empty, and so I throw a framed photo of me and Hayley towards the ground and my hands to my face and scream and scream and scream until my throat is just like me.

I am empty, and so I let out all the tears that I had been holding back during the reception and watch as they fall onto my unimaginably expensive suit until my heart is just like me.

I am empty, and so I stand and wipe the pathetic tears off my face before driving blindly to the nearest bar and drinking until I am shit-faced.

I am empty. Empty. And now, I am shit-faced.

-

One would think I had lost my mind, but it is here, exactly where it should be. The only problem is that it is empty.

I blink as quickly as I can to try to rid my eyes of their fogginess, but my vision betrays me regardless. What are you doing to me? Aren't you supposed to help me? Aren't I supposed to be able to see the drink in front of me?

I don't know how many of my senses have failed, so I reach down and try to grip the barstool beneath me with fuzzy fingers. I feel the softness of the cushion atop the coldness of the metal, and I bless my fingers for functioning. I reach forward and relish in the feeling of my bottle of beer, deciding to test next my sense of taste as I pour its bitter contents down my throat. The inside of it burns with every drop of the disgusting drink, but I don't stop.

I need to forget everything.

I need to get that image out of my mind — of her dancing with her arms around that man, his fingers wrapped roughly around her small waist as she leans on him. The much earlier image of the two of us in her bedroom — of her sobbing into my shoulder over her terrible fucking boyfriend. The following image that we never addressed — of her, broken and an emotional wreck, pressing her soft, wet lips onto mine.