To Do in a Day

To Do in a Day…

Today is a new day, I thought. I woke up early, and for the first few minutes of my morning I felt the motivation. I felt that solid, assured feeling of being on the road to a destination. I saw the obstacles ahead of me and how to hurdle them. But by the time I had finished showering and brushing my teeth I was stagnant. I couldn’t decide where I was going, and getting to nowhere can be harder than getting across a desert the size of the world. I had the heavy feeling in my head that clustered my thoughts together and made me feel like there was nothing to think about. It was a pestering, stressful feeling like my brain was working too hard, or maybe not hard enough. By the time I took a second shot of alcohol it was a question of whether or not anything was worth doing, any question worth asking, or any place worth going.

I fell asleep, woke up, got drunk, and fell asleep again.

When I met her the next day I was the size of a pea. I fell in deep, deep into the bottomless pit. I never asked myself then how depressed a person could get, or if there was a limit at all. I just felt good enough drifting deeper into the cradling black, and drinking from my bottle every now and then to make sure I didn’t crash at the bottom. I was on my way to the liquor store.

“You got any change?’ she asked.

I only stopped to talk because her voice sounded like a dollar that was worth everything in my pocket. It was truly the first time I heard such a thing, but I was also very drunk. I looked at her frail frame against the rotted brick of the corner store, and the black smudges that nobody really knows what they are or how they got there. She looked so soft against all that concrete. What was she, fourteen? Stringy haired white girl and red spots she had picked all over her neck, her voice was like another person trapped inside what she had been doing to herself.

I was really drunk, but I tried hard not to seem that way. I took a step toward her, stumbled, and gave myself away. Whatever, I thought, now I made it a point that she know I was drunk as hell and still in my right mind.

“Sir, do you have any change you can spare?”

“I ain’t had a spare nothing since I was a broker in ’92.” I said. “I was a stock broker, I made probably a whole million dollars. What are you doing?!”

She rolled her eyes.

I shuffled my feet and brought my body slightly closer to her. “Look, look… look,” I jammed my hands in my pocket and noticed how dingy my jeans were. It was true, I was a broker. I thought back and couldn’t decide what mistake had brought me there. I couldn’t help it. When I looked at her I wanted to see the voice insider of her jump out and talk to me. “I’m an alcoholic!” I said. “My life…” I forgot what I wanted to say for a second, but I recovered quickly. “My… I used to be a… a man but now…I get alcohol. Would you take my money?” I pulled out the few crumpled dollars and dirty dimes out of my pocket. “Look, this is all I got, and I’m gonna go drink it!”

“Go drink it dude, I only asked you a question.”

I couldn’t tell who was worse off at that moment. I just wanted to ask her if maybe we could help each other. Maybe if she would let me take care of her, I would go clean up my shit apartment, take off my shit jeans and give that voice inside of her something. I didn’t know exactly what that something was, but a chance at life outside of her throat is probably the answer.

“Okay…” she dragged the end of the word. “Go away now. The door to the liquor store is over there.”

I walked over to the curb and threw the money in the gutter. “I’m an alcoholic.” I said, still looking at the gutter and wanting to regret what I did. I looked at her and couldn’t find the words to say, and she couldn’t either, so I walked away.