Alone

Fuck.

    It was morning again, and I knew what that meant. It meant I had to wake up. It meant removing myself from my bed, the only safe place left in my life. No one understood, and lucky me, I lived with a household of people I had to explain everything to. Maybe today was going to be better. I resigned myself to getting up and getting dressed, which was fairly simple; getting dressed these days meant changing my shirt so that I at least appeared interested in hygiene. But let's be honest. I didn't give a shit.

    If someone had told me when I started dating him that I would have fucked things up after only nine months, I would have been more careful. Even if I couldn't have changed what I had done, I would have tried harder to be better, to take the time to enjoy him for everything he was and everything that he did. It was the little things; we found ourselves planning entire days to spend together, excited that we can go a continuous twenty four hours without having to leave each others sight. Summer mornings in his apartment found us hung over and tangled hopelessly in sheets, but it was easy to find the energy for five minutes of fucking. After all, we needed each other. His smile and his laugh stung as I brushed my teeth, staring at the ghost in the mirror. I didn't even recognize myself anymore. That woman, the one from my memories, was fearless, knew what she wanted, and knew where she belonged. But this shell in front of me no longer lived, not in the present anyway.

    Days continued to get darker. I lost myself within my own guilt and the knowledge that no matter the apologies, no matter what I did, I had burned too many bridges to repair all of the damage I had done. Even the innocence of my children couldn't bring me back. My own self loathing mixed with a hatred for my own existence ate away at me, piece by piece, until finally, I could no longer take it.

  I was ready to die.

  Fuck.

  I knew how to do it. I knew, at least as much as a healthy person could know, the pain that an overdose would bring. I knew that my family would never understand. I knew, in my death, the only thing I was accomplishing was righting what most would rate as trivial wrongs. But what I had come to believe was that I was programmed to die. That evolution had taught my body to understand it's worthlessness, and that by taking myself out of the equation, I was only making things better for those around me, and those still to enter my life.

  Ultimately, it was the hard truth that my kids would never understand my selfishness that made me seek help and turn what was inevitably a sinking ship into a limping dingy. Even now, I find myself weak at times. I feel the rush of despair whenever I see his face, knowing that it will never work. Only by overcoming the hollowness of what I had assumed was my own genetic programming and realizing that my daughters, in all of their innocence,  could never grasp my selfish reasons, have I maintained the status quo.