I got dropped off, drunk and depressed, at the dorm around 3:00 this morning. I hadn't slept the night before, nor the preceding nights, approaching a week's worth of nights spent clutching the dim hope that somehow, some way, things could be the way they were before.

I laid down on the bed, feeling less than healthy in a way that I knew the alcohol alone could not have made me feel. How many drinks did I have, anyway? Four, maybe five? I know I'm a lightweight, but damn. I turn my face toward the wall, hiding myself from my roommates, also still awake, studying for what could easily be the first time in their life, and I cry. I break down and cry - but only for a second.

Only a second.

I can't afford more.

I unscrunch my eyebrows, dabbing away the faint moisture from my eyes with the pillowcase. Not now. This isn't the time for crying.

I won't cry for her.

I stare out the window at the dark sky made blue-grey by the lights of downtown Austin, knowing that she is somewhere out there. Another night alone - the most painful sort of alone, when one is accustomed to companionship. Thoughts of her soft body, her hair, her lips, come unbidden to my mind.

I won't cry for her.

My left shoulder tingles as my thoughts drift. The fine lines of scars criss-crossing it remind me, scream at me: there's an easy way to numb this, make it go away. No need to cry.

I fight back the tears again, and sit back up at the computer. Four hours to go until class. Four hours to find distraction. Four hours to forget the world that has fallen apart around me.

Ritualistically, I set the alarm clocks. The battered, mechanical clock next to my pillow, the ineffectually quiet digital Sony on top my printer, and the shrieking, urgent alarm on my cell phone, the one she hated so much, the one that woke her without fail every time, the one I never failed to sleep through.

I kick my feet up onto the bed and pull the covers over me, still firmly planted in the chair. I'm done crying for her. I don't even know who I am; the man who was in love with her is not same one reflected in the mirror.


5:13 in the morning,
waiting to die