Non est ad astra mollis e terris via

Without work, the days stretch endlessly before me. I sleep like a kitten, random hours of naps, day and night are meaningless, my circadian rhythm long abandoned in a haze of drug use and despair. This morning I wake at 4 am after several hours of sleep filled with intensely vivid dreams. I stand at the window and watch the sun rise. As everything around me illuminates, I struggle to understand why, of all the lives that might have been mine, this is the one I have chosen for myself. For these few brief early morning moments, I am sober. I watch a fly caught on the sticky film trap, squirming to free itself. Tears spring quick to my eyes for I understand too well its plight.

The day is sunlit, it promises spring. I allow myself a few minutes to stand in the warmth, remembering how we used to talk of laying together on my living room floor, limbs intwined in these same pools of light, our fingers mapping each other's skin like newly discovered territory. The pain of missing you leaves me breathless, like the air has been knocked from my lungs. Resigned, I return to my darkened room and musty bed and pile of blankets. Opiates obliterate these memories, like hands pulling me downwards into a dark and churning sea of nothingness, I close my eyes and you are gone.

Awake. You. You. You. I am haunted. The sun slides behind the mountains and it is early evening, I am losing time again. I scroll through my phone contacts, desperate for company. Use my body as a bargaining chip again and again. I have nothing else. Regret is as familiar as loss as loneliness, there is no hierarchy. I swallow the pills and forget what it was like to ever be loved.

Later, his sweat still warm on my skin, I cry about her:

"Now, all I am is the villain in every story she tells other people"

"Listen baby," he replies, his voice a low growl next to my ear, "I am the villian in everyones' stories. It will get easier with time".