I sat in my living room squinting out the window as the sun’s rays tried to blind me. How do I tell you I love you more than she does? I took a sip of my coffee and smirked at the irony that I was thinking of him and drinking my morning coffee. The only part that really didn’t settle well with me was the fact that this came out of the blue.

Well, that would be a lie if I said that was the only reason. I sighed and walked over to the sink to wash out my coffee mug. It was partially the way he smiled at me and I knew it was genuine. It was the way he could make me laugh no matter what. I set the cup down to dry upside down in the opposite side of the sink. Maybe mostly it was the fact that he reminded me of my first love.

I found the remote for my stereo on the kitchen table and pressed the on button. As the discs rotated inside the machine I tried to remember what had been in disc number three. The opening chords strummed out of the speakers and my heart sank with the honesty and hopelessness of the lyrics. Brand New. It might as well have been entitled ‘How to Kill Yourself with Quarter-notes and Half-notes’. A flashback hit me like stepping on a tack; I hardly realized I had stepped into the nostalgia until it stung beneath my skin. His warm body supporting my fragile frame beneath the thin sheets on his bed, his breath- I shook my head, walked back to the kitchen and stretched my reach to the bottle above the refrigerator. Clear, nostalgia subduing, liquid that burns so good going down my throat I almost forget saying his name with the same warm breath. The image of the winding gravel road leading to the house is still as clear as if I had just been there yesterday.

From the other side of the room; which was rapidly blurring, I heard my cell phone vibrate across a wooden end table. I knew it was my friends calling to confirm the plans we had arranged for tonight. My stomach lurched at the thought of spending another night putting up my silly-drunk façade, when the truth was I was drinking to forget those memories. I bit my lip at the thought of how pathetic I sounded; drinking to forget. Psh! What a stereotypical excuse. But it worked. After the tequila and vodka settles there’s no recollection of our lips locking for the first time, there’s only the vomit at my feet and my head in my hands; which seemed to be the better of the two.

I stumbled across the room to the table and checked my cell phone. As I scanned the first three digits of the area code I found myself wondering how much I had really drank since my stomach had started to feel nauseous and my vision was obviously tricking my mind. My eyes focused and I realized I was reading the number clearly. I threw the phone down at the floor and closed my eyes. Why would he call me now?

Occasionally, the alcohol didn’t work. My arms fit perfectly around his waist, ‘I’ll be back by tomorrow.’ The look in his eyes killed me. It’s like he knew in a matter of months our two years together would end and in another few months our friendship would be chalked up to one of life’s many lessons. If I had known it would be so painful I would have rather lived in ignorance, never knowing the completeness of love.

I hardly noticed myself making another drink before the floor was racing towards my face as I lost my balance. I heard the muffled sound of the glass cup breaking on the kitchen floor. I huddled in the corner, leaning against my cupboards. Why was I doing this? No one knew, no one was there to pity me; no one even cared if I had a reason for numbing myself every night like this, not even him. All I want is to find someone like him again. It seemed like a recipe for destruction; a stupid idea, but somehow it might be less destructive than- I looked at the spreading puddle of liquid scattered with glass shards…

I imagined an outstretched hand extended in my direction and a soft voice speaking words of comfort and understanding. I reached my hand up in his direction but movement made the nausea in my stomach worse and the acidy taste of vomit crept up my throat. He retracted his hand and stepped back several feet as i lost my will to keep the vomit out of my mouth. No one wanted to help me anymore, not even a figment of my imagination. I somehow crawled my way through the hallway and made it to the bathroom.

There's a point in which, no matter how much you love something, you have to let go of it. I think of that as I’m lying on this bathroom floor among the cold, porcelain. By this point I’ve been here enough times to create a name for each of the thousand tiny tile pieces creating the floor. This toilet met my lunch and then shared it with these tiles a few times; you know how aiming is sometimes when you’re on the verge of suffocating on your own vomit, or actually, you might not. It’s a bittersweet routine. Your immediate reaction is to panic and gasp for air despite how much you wish you could just asphyxiate and get it over with. Anything would be better than constantly remembering how his kisses used to take away my breath and give me a high that could never compare to that of the illegal substances I constantly consumed.

I carefully lowered myself to the floor where I laid down and pressed my cheek against the bathroom rug that lay before the bathroom door. From down here I could see nothing but the darkness beneath the counter and a few piles of debris. How had I become so pathetic that I would put myself on the floor with the dirt? Was I just so dependant on other things that I couldn’t help myself?... I tried to raise myself up off the ground but I was too weak and my head fell back to the hard tiles. My eye caught the gleam of something shiny below the cabinet. I reached my hand into the darkness and pulled out a plain silver ring. I twirled it between my two fingers in a mix of drunkenness and shock. I remembered the night I had panicked and thought I’d lost it. I laughed loudly as a pair of tears trailed down my face. I slipped it over my middle finger and turned my hand to examine it but the ring quickly fell right of my finger. The weight I had lost in the past few months due to… I rolled back under the counter to a dark corner where I couldn’t reach it. I wondered where the one that matched it had ended up. And in possibly the only moment of clarity I had had for some months I realized it didn’t matter because wherever it was, there was no meaning behind them anymore.