I spend my nightshift marinating in my heartache like a fucking steak, struggling to tread water in the hurricane of my mind. The music surrounds me like fog, each tinnitus-inducing word vibrating against my spine and it’s so close, it’s almost enough to overtake the chorus of pain repeating in my mind, humming in my ear like a mosquito on a summer night.
. . .
I’m afraid to sleep these days. I haunt myself every night in my dreams, conjuring up ghosts and marionetting them into blockbuster visions of romance. I’m swept off my feet and kissed like it’s religion only to wake up cold and alone in the dark.
No matter what I do, or how hard I do it, the arrow in my chest throbs and throbs–an infinity of disquiet, a circle of despair. I’m an un-incremented While Loop crashing servers like a plane from the sky every time I take a breath, always checking and checking for a variable that never changes…
The rum stings when it hits the back of my mouth, warms my throat on its way down. The sensory stimulus only lasts for a minute and my vision is blurry, but I keep pouring it down.
The drugs are never enough.
And I can never run fast enough, scream loud enough, laugh hard enough.
I’ll never be enough.
. . .
Another shot of rum burns me from the inside out and my head careens backward.
I wonder if I will ever stop bleeding out. Will the fountain of pain streaming through my veins finally run dry? The hot, red blood that is life, electrified at every moment with the unbearable tug of something that’s missing. Something always missing. I wonder if someday, will I finally lie still?
Or, is it really endless, like they all say?
When day 166 turns into day 572, when my world is upside down and my blood adorns the carpet, will I finally lie still?
Method of Mancy 