GRASSHOPER - Chapter One - I Hate

Last night I curled down close to you, curled up against that part of your back that is smooth and sculpted. I ran my fingernails along your spine, tracing invisible patterns on your flesh and breathing in your whiskey-tainted scent. You tell me you’ve been sober for six months now and still, the smell of your habit drifts across the wall of my senses. Sometimes when you breath in the dark, the smell that lingers is one of sweetness and rot. In those moments my soul shrinks back and the world looms large and hopeless around me. In those moments, I understand what hate is because I hate you, hate myself for being in love with you.

There is so much about your addiction that I hate. I hate the way people look at me, like something broken and only good enough for the affections of a drunk. I walk up on conversations that suddenly stop with a wild, cautious look in their eyes and pity taking residence on their pursed lips. I despise the way my family has accepted my poor choice in men as a sign of my own ultimate weakness, and freely uses it as a tool to ostracize me. I hate that being with you gives my friends all the justification they need to coach me, push me along toward what they deem a more appropriate path. Did I always seem this lost to those that claimed to love me? I hate that being with you makes me feel like less of a credible person.

Tonight, still reeling in the aftershock of another lie, another battle with your chronic dishonesty, I beg a silent God to help me. I pray for the strength to leave you. I beg for it. I beg for it as tears run down my face in the dark. If I could walk away, if I could get as far as the door, I would make a new start. I'd leave you to your lies. I'd leave you with your empty bottles and broken dreams.

I think now, perhaps you and I were always doomed.