When is it ever enough

When is it ever enough?




I was on my knees, my hands on each side of the tiolet, watching my sick twirling around at the bottom. It's a horrible site to see the contents of your day in a green colour with chunks of god only know's what. The most thing that bothered me was: I couldn't even recognise the face staring back at me in the mirror, his eye's small and puffy. He was a stranger to me. Who was this drunken teenager, this absolute fool i never knew existed? Was he the new me, the better and imperfect me?

There was a thump, and i felt my head smack against the wall beside me. My Dad put his arm under mine and walked me into my bedroom, where i lay down and pulled the covers half way up. I felt like a baby being tucked into bed, because that's what i was acting like. Your mind and body go out the door, and the only thing controlling you is the drink, which drives you out into total caos and neutrality. You don't know where you're going or when you'll be back, but you feel that somethings wrong when people around you start staring. You can see their strange looks, and you know you're making a show of yourself, that you're causing yourself more embarrassment than you could ever realise. You finally get the picture when your own parents are avoiding you the next morning, after you've broken a counter and a few ornamental glasses the night before. You look back at all these things and feel sick with sadness, regret and guilt. There are so many things running through your head, but their the main ones.

It's amazing that i woke up with just two different size eye's and a small headache. I thought i deserved more for putting my Mam and Dad through hell. They told me that anything i broke was replaceable, and that i wasn't. A lot of very expensive things meant nothing to them, as long as i was ok. You never know how much your parents really love you until that fatal moment in your life when everything comes under scrutiny, and their there to protect you, to stand by and hold your hand no matter how old you are. You might cry, but they'll be there to wipe the tears away. I've had a lot of tears needed wiping, but i never once asked anyone to wipe them for me. I clenched my fists and did it myself, like a man. The only thing is: I'm not a man, nor will i ever try to be, because the minute i do that i lose any sense of what it used to be like being young. I don't care how many people laugh at me or jeer me, i've seen men, and their nothing to be proud of, nothing i'd ever want to become. All we are is hard men who trap ourselves within a shell of machismo, too afraid to express emotion and accept loss. We are like robots in a way.

When people ask me where i think heaven is, i use my left hand to point at the can in my right. I'm not sure there is a cure for what i have. There's group talks and so on, but even when you think it's gone, the bottle still calls to you, the can still shines in the corner of your eye, and all you want to do is give in to temptation. I seen Nicholas Cage in that movie 'Leaving Las Vegas', and told myself i didn't want to be the real life version of that character, drinking myself to sleep and looking for a cure that's not at the end of a bottle. We really are a puzzling race of people. We cannot grasp why we drink, smoke or do drugs in the first place, and how any of those things relieve us from the pain of total darkness, the pain of being alone in an alley somewhere, waiting for someone to stroll along and feel pity for us. Most of us would probably say it's because we get addicted, but i'm not convinced.

The cool morning breeze blew across my face. Before last night, i would've never sat out my back in the morning, watching the sun coming up. It was beautiful. It hurt my eye's, but it was beautiful all the same. Would it be possible that you could actually understand such beauty?

I confront that face again, that face i know nothing about. I look into my own eyes in the mirror, right into the blue core of my soul, searching for an answer to why we do the things we do, why i try to drink my problems away. I try and try, but no matter how fast you go, people will always catch up with you in the end. Your problems will always catch up with you in the end. There really is no escaping them. You could run for years and years or lock yourself away, but eventually you'll have to face up to what you fear the most. My fears lie in a bottle. My addiction lies in a bottle. So, i come face to face with the thought that strolled around in my head as i staggered home on the road last night. When is it ever enough?