23

How To

How To Descend

you start by breaking up with your boyfriend, your best friend
who might have been the only person keeping you sane
(but you didn't know it then)
and you fuck around.

You burn that bridge with idle sarcastic lies
that your boyfriend, your best friend, believes
(which just shows that he didn't know you too well after all, not after four years anyway)
and you find yourself alone.

You fuck around with people you shouldn't fuck around
but they're there, and they'll take you
(and at this point you're desperate to be taken)
and your self-image slips.

Then you tell your remaining friends that you have priorities,
that they're not number one, that this stranger is
(this stranger they don't approve of and who treats you like shit but mmmm, the sex is good, isn't it?)
and you wake up one morning alone.

You get very drunk a lot, vodka becomes your boyfriend, your best friend,
and on one of those nights
(those very drunk, half-remembered nights)
you let more strangers into you.

That's how you lose the guy who treats you like shit,
whose only redeeming quality was that he treated you like shit on a regular basis
(and mmm the sex was good, wasn't it?)
and you start taking walks.

These are not regular walks, the ones you take, they are ones
that start at midnight or one or two in the morning, and as you walk
(in the coldest nights, if you can arrange that)
you smoke cigarettes and fight back hysterical sobs.

And then you remember you have pills left over
from a long-ago surgery, that didn't hurt as much as it should have
(that surgery was another life ago, a happy and held-together life ago)
and they start to look deliciously good.

You realize you have a problem or two problems or at the very least some problems
which you think is a sign that you're getting better
(it always was a sign before)
and so you don't ask for help.

In fact you refuse to ask for help, which is when you start to really fall down
because you start to expect the health and happiness to come back
(because you've kidded yourself for so long about this one, haven't you?)
and you insist - you thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the light.

You start to "date" people and your eighth-grade mentality comes back
the mentality that never understood love
(and especially never understood anyone who said they liked you)
and you find yourself fucking for things.

You find yourself becoming a low-grade, college-level, materialistic whore
and you convince yourself it's all right.
(Doesn't everyone have a price?)
Finally you assert some ethics and quit it.

Then you just find yourself alone again,
because even if it was the worst sex of your life, someone was there
(and the nights weren't so cold and the walks weren't so long)
and they knew how to hold you, even if it was badly.

While you're alone you drink some more and you cry a lot,
and you cut yourself at home and at work
(no one is ever very observant, no one is ever observant enough)
and you relish the blood while sucking it away so that there are no obvious scabs.

Of a sudden you wake up and find you're dating three people at once,
which is every man's dream until he or she realizes it
(because when you have any sort of soul or humanity polygamy only tears it down)
and you hate yourself even more, ever more.

You wean away. You wake up to life a little. You break it off,
one by one, and finally you're only seeing one person
(one person who might be good for you)
and because you have fallen so far you think about breaking it off again.

If you break it off, you will be an island again, and no one will be able to hurt you.
You will be able to fix the people who you have hurt, because you have become familiar with the sound of settling.
(If you break it off you will be a hollow shell again, and no one will notice, and no one will care)
and you start to weigh the dangers of being hurt against the pain that goes with hurting.

Here is your decision.
Will you settle, and make your other lover happy?
No one will hear your soft sobs at night and no one will see your midnight walks recommence.
No one will be watching for you, and no one will catch you this time.
(Do you want to be caught?)
But if you open up,
and you let the possibility of pain grow
(if you let him try to fix you, and if you let you love him)
you may be fixed.
You also may be broken again,
at the end of this ordeal,
like a china plate which can be broken over and over again
into ever-smaller pieces
(into dust, and dust comes from dust, and dust unto dust forever and ever)
until you cannot move any more.

Here is your choice.
Do you break yourself,
or do you let someone else take you,
to be broken at some future point?