Alice part two.

It was a cold night on the fourth of December. The air was chilly and I felt it all over my body as I fell down onto the grass. It hit my back and stabbed me through my clothing. No matter how much protection I wore, it always seemed to hit me right in the chest. It felt as if I was being stabbed in the heart, the way the blades of the grass brushed against the back of my neck. The air encased my body and threw me into shivers. It smelled of pine from the trees behind. The taste of mint was left in my mouth. I remembered the way her perfume always smelled of roses and vanilla, and I could almost smell it. I placed my hands on the ground and the blades of grass pierced my palms. I began to stop noticing the difference between reality and what was going on in my mind. The line between the two grew thin and breakable.
I closed my eyes and started to fall completely into my mind, thinking of a thousand different thoughts at once. I tried to close out everything that was happening around me and clear my head, but it seemed impossible at that point. Ever since she had left, my mind ran a mile a minute. I couldn’t eat, speak or survive without her next to me. It was the moment that she left that the wind had transformed into her voice. The trees began to harmonize and the leaves began to sing lullabies of pain. I was left unsure how to respond but in a low, soft tone of agony. My parents keep asking when she planned on coming back and I couldn’t say anything. I could only choke back tears as my existance fell apart.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say; it was more of the fact that I had too much to say. I couldn’t figure out what sound waves were travelling out of my mouth. It seemed like a thousand thoughts on a road that was split into a thousand directions, crashing into each other and molding into separate thoughts and “what ifs.” In a way, I enjoyed it. I always looked at it in the perspective, “it is better to think too much than not at all.” They ran on the roads in my head, voices bouncing off the walls of my mind and pushing me further off the cliff of insanity. I never knew how to cope with it and it seemed difficult to understand. How would I cope with something I’ve lived with my entire life and simply repressed?
I once knew a girl that was named Lucille. I remember we were sitting on my bed. She had pearly white teeth and naturally curly brown hair. Her laugh was a cackle and she always had gum in her mouth. A polaroid fell out of a notebook I once had and that was the end of it. I preferred to not talk about the woman in the old picture. She told me all about herself that night. She believed strongly in the fact that she was raped and sent off into a dream world. When she was only eight years old, her father took her virginity on the bathroom floor. She remembers the event clearly up to the point of complete black.
There was no hospital bed, there was no more of the home, there was no more of her father, mother or siblings. She woke up in a completely new realm. The house was different. The air tasted stronger and cleaner and both the bottles around her room and the deep green eyes of her father were gone. There was no lingering of the smell of chewing tobacco, there was none of the laughter that chilled her to the bone. It was completely new and refreshed, like chewing a mint leaf. That always got me wondering. What if I’m in a dream world, a different galaxy, a new planet? What if I’m not where I think I am and no one has told me because no one has known themselves?
You see, I think a lot. I think and think and think but I can never get her out of my mind. She was the only thing that made my mind go blank. One piece of her I’ll always hold dear is how she would draw. She thought a lot like I do and when we drew together, all thoughts were erased and we entered a state of utter ecstasy. I had ASMR and she would let me lay on her lap with the notebook right by my ear, going back and forth with lead on paper to make the sounds that sent me into complete relaxation.
I looked up. I saw the stars and the moon, watching over my suffering. They stared at me and it was almost as if they could touch my very soul. I took a pack of cigarettes out of my jeans pocket and took a smoke out, placing it between my lips. It was a disgusting habit I inhabited from anxiety and depression. It was my only outlet.
It was chilly, maybe forty five degrees outside. My body temperature was already rising from the panic that started to stir in my chest from thinking too much. I could almost taste strawberries in my mouth and the thought of it made me shake harder than I was already shaking. I was instantly more upset than I already was, a flare of anger washing over me as I lit the cigarette to take the taste out of my mouth that I knew very well was only a phantom. The feeling of smoke invading my lungs made me cough and feel sick to my stomach, though it was better than the feeling of unhappiness.
The best way I can describe myself is a boy trapped inside a man. I was, in fact, immature and depressive. There were only a few words to describe me, one of them being “a mess.” When she left me, I was unsure of who I was. I still am unsure who I am at this point, unable to connect with anyone and anything. Maybe, if we were in fact, not real, if there were other dimensions, other places, other galaxies and different planets, we might have worked.
Maybe in a sunken world we might have made it. We could swim together and our chests would rise and fall. We never would've slammed the doors and screamed I hate you’s, we would bathe in our atmosphere and take in every curve, line and spot on each other. Our imperfections were perfection to each other, though we hated the way we looked ourselves. It was as if we were looking at each other through the other person’s eyes for a moment, we saw every blink of love and admiration. We would slowly drown while looking in each other's eyes, whispering I love you’s as our last breaths, the bubbles rising to the surface.
Maybe in a world of fantasy, where she was the princess and I was the knight, slaying dragons to steal her heart. She would be admired by every other queen and princess, a figure of independence and determination. I was looked down on for my past and we were completely different, though we made a perfect match. I would crash through doors and triumph over every obstacle in my way to see her smile one more time. I don’t think she would’ve realized how much I was willing to give up.
Or, in a world of roller coasters. Where we would ride up and down and in loops as we talked about how we believed in God and what was wrong with the economy. Our stomachs would turn as we whined and threw up again and again, though even with her face pale and her lips chapped, she was beautiful. It seemed to be out of the world, how porcelain her skin was, despite her persistent desire to be tan. How gray her eyes were, and how she always wanted them to be blue. How small she was, but she always wanted to be taller, more full figured. I saw so much in her eyes. She always complained about them being single-toned. Little did she know how wonderful she was, how much of her story could be told with a single exchange of a look. She threw up again and I laughed as I followed. She was always something extraordinary.
Maybe, in a world made completely of ice, she would be the queen. She would rule with mercy, empathy, and sympathy; all three of which I had always lacked. She was my other half. I was the devil to an angel, she twisted me and created me. She made me reborn, something no one else has ever been able to do. I went from a cold hearted bastard to someone with a mind to think logically, a heart to think thoughtfully, a body to work in grace. I tried so hard to do it on my own, but I always fell short. Then I saw her and my whole world changed. I knew I was home in her eyes.
Perhaps, in a world where we were aliens with four sets of teeth and antennas, we would laugh and open our mouths to release squeals and squeaks and foreign sounds. It would be the opposite of what we know now, with skin of pure blue and eyes of purple. The sound of our smiles would be like bubbles popping and the smell of our hands would be nicotine. The taste of our mouths would be of steel and our ears would be triangles. Our eyes would have lashes to extend up to our eyebrows, our noses would be squares and we would be so helplessly in love in a world of utter strangeness.
Sadly, none of these worlds were real. Our realm was full of sadness, drugs and meaningless sex to try and forget the words I so desperately wanted to hear out of her mouth again. The love burned me away. We were a flame. We burned so brightly and we created light around us to cure the darkness. Though, when she left, I lost my other half. I was a single burning match, and we all know that matches dim quickly, and certainly, that is what happened. The darkness consumed me when she left. I had no reason to live anymore without her by my side.
I heard a small beeping in the back of my mind. It was a constant repetitive sound. It had been happening for the entire time I had been thinking. I simply dismissed it as I always had, and got lost into my dream world once more.
I wish I never told her I loved her, I wish we never made love. I wish she never called me daddy and I never called her baby. I wish I never memorized every curve of her body and the way her chest rose and fell when she would take a breath. I wish that I hated her. The sad part is, I don’t hate her. Not even a little, not at all.
Maybe I’ll put a bullet in my head. Maybe I’ll slit my wrists. Maybe I’ll throw myself off a building. What’s the point anymore? It would hurt less than the feeling in my chest.
I always thought suicide was a selfish topic. My mom used to debate it with me. We would go back and forth and talk about how God wasn’t real and if He was, He had forsaken us. We had both gone through our lives with struggles. Rape, being beaten, being absolutely mentally destroyed . We would refuse the hand of God, if He was even real, because He had let those events happen to us. Perhaps it was a good thing. It had made us stronger, and made us come together as mother and son. Though, sadly it was those events that would end up killing us in the end.
We went to different ways of coping. She split into different personalities. I broke down completely and began bad habits, wrecking my life. She did the same in her younger years. We would talk about how suicide was selfish, mostly because of the fact that it not only destroyed the person, it destroyed everyone around them. The main purpose of suicide was to get rid of the pain, get rid of the loneliness and get rid of the absolute wreck the person, or others, had made of their lives. Me and my mother suffered depression together. We were both bipolar, as well.
Our mental illnesses had made our daily lives difficult. We would struggle with multiple occurrences each day and we would refuse medication together. It was so easy. We would go from topics of serial killers, the dark web, motivations for the way people would hurt others, followed by things like how we wanted pizza rolls, and laughter. It was an unhealthy relationship, but at least it was ours.
I had a burning hatred for my father. He had let the abuse happen to me, and refused to take any action. I was on medication when I was younger, and he would tell me it wasn’t valid. It was “just a part of growing up.” He was close minded and refused to accept any of my ideas or my pain, which is why I hated him in my adolescence. I had come to accept that he was who he was, and I am who I am, and we would never get along. I was willing to forgive him and accept that, though I never successfully did either of those things.
I think she was from a different world; a different time, a different dimension. No one from this world could be so clever, so beautiful and so mesmerizing. She had to be from a different galaxy, meant to do something that no one else in the world would understand or be able to recreate. She was like art on a canvas: misunderstood and made specifically with different colors to symbolize different things. I didn't understand it, though I suppose it would take a keen eye to understand her completely. It's something you wanted so badly to comprehend, something you needed to comprehend, but you just couldn’t.
It is all my fault and it will always be all my fault. She was beautiful but dangerous, like a rose with thorns that pricked my hands and made me bleed. I was well aware of the issues she would start in my life, but I chose her anyhow. I’m a product of my own anger. My rage has consumed me. I have run along the tracks and waited for the to be hit, and still, I have not been crushed by the overwhelming weight of the train, the guilt in my heart. I can’t hold my own weight without breaking my legs. I have nothing left but a black hole in my chest, I have nothing to live for and my whole life is destroyed. Without her, I can not breathe. She was the oxygen in my lungs and the flowers in my thoughts. I have never been more innocent than when she was with me. Without her, I am completely and utterly a mess.
I shouldn’t be so pessimistic, is what my therapist told me. She said I needed to find spiritual enlightenment. She wasn’t wrong. I look for validation in other people. I’ve always hated myself. I hate the way I move, the way I speak, the way I smile and the way I survive instead of live. I was never the saint I made myself out to be. In reality, I felt like a demon inside. She was the angel, and I was the demon she fell in love with, and I destroyed her to try to become what I was not.
She was soft and gentle, like a flower, beautiful and innocent. She was willing to give up her entire life for me and I sucked her soul out of her body. When we had met, she was life and I was death. She had sent me many gifts, and I had kept them instead of returning presents of my own to make her soul brighter, to make her smile wider. Each gift had taken a little piece of her soul that I never cared to return. Instead, she ran herself dry, and I felt like I was the calm sky after a rainstorm: peacefully blissful. I felt like the most special man alive at that moment. As she was dying, I was coming back to life.
It isn’t that I didn’t believe in therapy. I just didn’t believe that I was worth the time that it took to heal, or that I even wanted to heal at that point. I heard so much about how happiness and spiritual enlightenment could change your mind, body and soul. I’d seen it happen, heard it happen and tried my best to do what I could. In the end, I found comfort in my destruction, and maybe that’s all I’m worth.
I sighed. My breath was irregular, deep and uneven. It hurt my chest with each inhale; her love had started fires within me that burned to ash and dust when she left. My head was filled with the smoke of the thousand cigarettes that I had consumed.
You know what hurt the most? It wasn’t the fact that she wasn’t there next to me like she was supposed to be. It wasn’t the fact that she had someone new on her arm. It wasn’t the fact that I couldn’t breathe correctly anymore. It was the fact that I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for my mistakes. I couldn’t blame God for the way I was. I couldn’t blame her for the way she left. I couldn’t blame anyone for just trying to be happy. Perhaps I was almost glad that she left, settling for a broken state of contempt: she would find a better life with a better person. A person that I was unable to be.
I remember the way she would gasp when I would run my fingers through her hair, the way her soft, pink lips parted and how beautiful she looked without makeup. I remember the way the corners of her mouth would turn up in a smile, and how it was the most breathtaking thing I had ever seen. I remember the way her breath hitched as I ran my hands up her soft, silky thighs and I remember the way she would whisper my name when she would drift off to sleep.
I remember the first time she told me she loved me. It was horrifying, and I wanted to run and hide, but all I did was swallow hard and whisper it back. She had started to cry and she gave me the biggest hug I’ve ever received. She stayed the night at my house with me. We were always alone because my parents were always gone. We had talked all night.
I remember the first time we had sex. It was clumsy, messy and overall stupid. I cracked jokes and she laughed and hit me. I was very careful and wanted to explore her completely. She melted into my touch, and that was the most relaxed I’ve ever seen her.
I remember the first time she cried. I can’t remember rhyme or reason, but I remember it hurt watching her hurt. I remember the way her eyes welled with tears, the way her whole body shook. I remember the way she sobbed out my name as a saving grace and I remember the ache in my chest when I couldn’t hold her. I remember the way I told a joke when she was crying and she let out a soft giggle mixed with choked back sobs, and how the sound tore me apart.
She always said “why” instead of “while” and she always giggled at really stupid jokes. She laughed at the creative jokes too, but the “u fag” always made her laugh harder. I tried to change my humor for her.
She had a penchant for quotes. That much stuck with me. She once said to me, “I am just a chapter in your life, but you will always be the entire story.” She rambled that night, talking about how much she just wanted to be more than a single chapter or a dusty page with a rose pressed in it that you turn back to once a year.
She loved poetry and she loved to express herself. She would draw on rainy days and smile out the window to watch the drips of water pour onto the concrete. She would spend months on a single painting of flowers, trying so hard to get that one petal just right, only to toss it in the trash the night she finished it. I always wondered why she threw out her artwork, and I asked her once. All I got was a shrug and, “I’m finished with it.” I never understood and I don’t think I ever will.
She was a total extrovert. She hung out with everyone and everything, talking to the trees in case they had feelings. She was always a big fan of nature and it’s something I admired, I admit. I couldn't understand the feeling of peace that swept over her face when she trampled through the woods and ruined her jeans, like a child who just learned how to walk. She always had the innocence of a child, quiet and unspoken. When you hold her, she gives you the same feeling of holding a newborn. She’s very small, quiet and frail. You have to be careful or she might fall apart like a ball of yarn, it seems. Though, she's the strongest person I've ever met. She's gone to hell and back several times but damn, she came out resilient.
She gave me every reason to believe she was the love of my life, but somehow my doubts, my unpredictable actions and my bad habits had sold me into a life of unhappiness. She was the reason I fought those thoughts, the reason I tried so hard. Without her, what did I have to live for anymore?
I decided right then and there that I would kill myself. Now, before you judge me and say, “But that’s what you’ve always been against,” I know. I just couldn’t cope with it anymore. My life was meaningless, it held no emotion and I was slowly losing my own. My limbs were falling away from my body and my heart had burned to the ground along with every toke I took, every pill I snorted, and every cigarette I inhaled to try to forget the memories. I decided to take my own life and leave this world behind, whatever it truly was.
My skin was more pale than usual and I ran my fingers through my locks. I had promised myself to cut them off when she left. She was the only reason I kept my hair long, but I decided to keep them as a memory. I could feel all the color leave my face as I took the final step to end my own life. I had braced for the moment before I even knew that that night would be the night I finally did it. I stood up, threw my cigarette butt at the ground, pressed my boot into it to cut off the flame, and began to walk back home. I was about seven minutes away, and that seven minutes was hell to me.
My body ached, my head pounded and my hands shook. There was a panic rising in my chest, like when I first met her, and when she had said her final goodbyes in a note. She handed it to me and ran to our room, locking the door. I ended up busting down the door. We spent three hours going back and forth, screaming at each other in an empty house. She finally passed out from all the liquor she consumed. I passed out from the exhaustion. There was a soft beeping in my head that was growing steadily louder. I was unsure how to feel. It reminded me of her breathing machine that she had to use. Asthma. I took a final, shaky breath as I swung the backdoor open and entered. I knew exactly where the pills were, how many to take. How many would kill me.
My smile was crooked as I unscrewed the cap and poured two over the amount memorized, for good measure. I tilted my head back and the pills went down my throat easily. She always wondered how I could take them without water, and I always told her I didn’t know. My substance abuse in my past had allowed me to, though I never told her about that.
I walked into my room, my head already feeling woozy. I collected every memory that we had together, every picture, every momento. I sprayed her perfume around the room and on my pillows, laying the past out on the sides of the bed. I laid my body down, right in the middle of everything we had done together. Just then, my phone rang. Lucille had been calling me but I never took the phone out of my house. Thirteen missed calls. I picked up the phone and in a shaky, hoarse and whispering tone I told her goodbye. She screamed and I hung up the phone, placing it on my chest and closing my eyes. Five to ten minutes pass, and I have not moved a single muscle. I just lay there, hoping the pills will take me, too nervous to take any further action. My breaths were shaky and I could hear police sirens, I didn’t know what to do. As a last resort, I pulled my twenty two revolver out of the back of the closet. Before they reached my home, I placed it against my head. I wanted her to know that she was the last thing that went through my mind. Tears ran down my face, and just as I heard the doors being busted down by police, I shot. My whole world went black.
I saw pictures of Alice. I read somewhere that you have exactly seven minutes of recollection of your life after you die. Alice ran through my head, and every time I beat her, every time she laughed, every time she smiled and every time she cried, I prayed for God’s forgiveness. I got down on my knees before the blinding light and said, “God, I know I never believed in you, but I ask you now. Please forgive me for my sins, I know I have done wrong. Though I have killed myself, I hope you will still accept me into heaven. Thank you for helping me make it this far.”
Suddenly, He appeared at my side. He was nothing like the icons: just a blinding bright light with a slight form to It. I could see a beautiful, breathtaking smile through the light and knew I had done the right thing. He took my hand, and suddenly I felt whole. I had never felt whole except being by her side, but I felt the warmth of love and care wash over my body. It was a confidence I’d never had before, and His was a smile was so genuine, I could feel it in my bones. He led me above the place where I had shot myself and I saw my bloody body being picked up and taken away on a stretcher. Lucille was there and she screamed and cried out in agony. Then, I saw her. I saw Alice as she looked over my body before it was taken. She had the expression of pure emptiness and I realized what a fucking mistake I made.
I heard one thing before we disappeared. The silky soft voice that I’ve imagined in my head so many times but never could get exactly right ran through my ears in a single phrase. “I loved you.”
I let the devil know that I was brave enough to die, and I let God know that I was brave enough to take his hand. I let the world know that I was brave enough to not live on. I once had a friend named Patrick. He would always tell me how much he admired me for trying. It was my second time trying to kill myself, though the first time was unsuccessful. He told me how brave I was for leaving this world. I heard his husky voice, after all the tears he shed, in my head. “I’m proud of you,” was all that he uttered. I’m proud of me too, Patrick. I’m proud of me too.
I use to stick my head out the window of my car and scream, doing circles in parking lots, dangerous things on the highway with music blasting out my eardrums. I would get screamed at a lot by passers by, but it never really bothered me much. Nothing I could not handle. I had been screamed at my entire life, what’s another yelling voice from a stranger?
I had substance abuse issues. I could never get my life correct but when I was high and off into the clouds, my life seemed normal for once. I no longer felt that I was a waste of space, I had my life together then. Whether it was taking a bunch of prescription medicine, smoking weed or drowning myself in chemicals, I would finally feel happy.
My funeral was depressing, really. No one showed up but Lucille. Not even my parents came, but they never really cared much anyways. None of my friends came because I had none, and the remaining members of my family were dead. She sat there silently and ran her fingers over the photos that the funeral workers had put up. Lucille had printed out some pictures of us together and they found a couple from my past in my home. It turns out my parents never came home that night anyways, nor the night after that, nor the night after that. It didn’t surprise me much.
Alice didn’t come. That stung a little bit. I figured she would at least come to my funeral and wish me a goodbye, but she didn’t. He took me to where she was and I was moved, floating above her. I remembered it from our past. The way she would crumble apart. She was just sitting there, staring at the wall. I stared at her until night came and she finally stood. She placed her soft, delicate and little feet against the carpet and walked to the window. It opened from her small hands tugging with all her strength before she leaned out. The sound that came out of her mouth is one that still haunts me. She let out a long, ear piercing scream of agony. She cracked multiple times and started to sob through the scream. At that moment, I wished I could kill myself twice.
The stars that watched over us every night were in shock. The tragic love story had turned into something morbid. I spent a few days just watching her. God never left my side but when I asked Him why we weren’t going to heaven yet, He looked down on me and whispered, “You’re in heaven with her. She is more than I could ever provide for you.”
Oh God, what mistake have I made? I have taken my life away and what I truly needed to discover is no longer reachable. I could never hold her hand again or stare into those gray eyes while she stared back into mine. I could never touch her leg while we drove in the car, and I could never hear her silky soft voice in my ears. I tried desperately to break down in sobs but I couldn’t. That’s when I realized He was not at my side anymore. I was completely alone as I stared down at her. I was supposed to be happy. That’s what she always wanted for me. I had done something that I thought would take all my pain away, but in reality, I had received more pain than I had gotten rid of.
I tried so hard to do other activities. I would go to Lucille, I would watch her in her daily life, but after an hour or two I would be right back at Alice. I watched her as she went to coffee shops with bright red lips and smokey eyes, as she laughed. Her laugh was something awful now, no longer giving me the smile that I so desperately wanted to feel again. It was heartbreaking to hear her laugh because I knew it wasn’t real. I could see the pain in her eyes each day as she put on more makeup and her clothes got darker. Instead of beautiful pin up dresses and soft socks, she began to stop caring. Black leggings or jeans, a t-shirt, messed up hair. She began to crumble like a pastry. It hurt to watch her hurt, more than ever before.
I could never be the same after loving that girl. Her voice was the only sound I could recognize, but now that sound was muffled through water. I just couldn’t walk away. How could I pretend that we never slammed the doors and we never shouted I love you’s? How could I pretend that she didn’t love me then? How could I pretend that we never held hands, and that her palms weren’t always sweaty, and how could I pretend that she was the same after me?
I miss you when I stay up till four am, I miss you when my stomach turns from all the food I could not consume. I miss you when I sit there and look out the window, thinking about all the things that I could do out in the world, just like you use to do. I even miss when you thought you were a bother, though you never were. Do you miss me too?
Why should I apologize for what I’ve become? I did some messed up actions, sure. Though, no one ever apologized for making me this way.
I think she truly scared me. She wasn’t threatening at all. She was small, sweet, giggly and adorable. Though, she scared me with her personality. She had her downfalls like drinking too much some nights, smoking too much pot to where she could not see straight, and crying so hard that she threw up at one am in the morning. It was difficult to see her in that state, sitting on the bathroom floor at one am and just sobbing her little heart out. The black tears that rolled from her eyes, stained by eyeliner and whatever else she used on her damn eyes, falling down onto the floor. She whined as she emptied her stomach again and again and that’s what hurt the most. Seeing her like that and experiencing what I knew she was going through right now.
She was whole by herself is what terrified me, she was the only piece to her own puzzle. She didn’t need anybody else, she always stressed how independent she was. She needed no one but wanted some things. If she didn’t get those things, it was no big deal. She would just keep going on her wonderful way, skipping and smiling like a kid in a candy store. But did she really know the difference between smiling and being happy, and breaking down in sadness? She had never experienced anything different from what she usually had. Anything that happened that was less than good to her was simply normal. Any time she did not get what she wanted, it seemed like a normal thing that could happen to anybody. Eventually, she accepted that fighting for those things was harder than just letting go. She gave to people what she never received and yet, it being so weird and abnormal, she did everything perfectly. The only reasoning for her being so good at giving and taking care, would be her natural incentive to help others at the expense of her own well being and happiness.
It was odd to watch, really. I saw her in the best states I’ve ever seen her be in, looking at the window at five am as the sun just started to rise. How she would squeal, laugh and smile just for the reason of being alive. Sometimes, it was hard to comprehend how she could be so alive while being so dead inside. She told me that sometimes when she had no emotion, it tore her apart. She wanted desperately to smile and hold the hand of other individuals that needed help at that moment, but she couldn’t feel anything but numbness. I prayed to God that she wouldn’t ever feel that again, for it was what I felt constantly.
God, out of everything I loved about her, she couldn’t sing worth Jesus’s name. I picked on her a lot for it, but secretly, I enjoyed the cracked and low sound that would come out of her mouth.
My favorite part about her is when she would get really into something. I don’t mean smiling at the sunrise, but when she laughed too hard and forgot to care about what she looked like. When she was so absorbed in the conversation at hand that she forgot to check the camera or the mirror, when she forgot that there was imperfections in the world and there was another person there with her. When she was singing a song and used her high voice even though she hated it so much when she was normal. However the one thing she always kept in her mind in these times was “I never claimed to be perfect, perfect is perception, and perception is all that they can see.” It took any man a day sat awake to see her true beauty. I never explained what true beauty was, but I always saw it as the things beyond our physical selves.
The knot of desire tightening in my abdomen, the place where I usually felt butterflies of despair. The light headed feeling of one too many drinks were all too familiar and the flowers in my lungs were burnt out by cigarettes. I found myself unhappy, until you come upon me. I found myself staring at the wind and whispering to it how I was so afraid, how I was so twisted. I felt dreams of tearing your yarn limbs into strings and creating beautiful masterpieces from them, stringing together messily stitched pieces of art. My mother always told me that perfection didn't exist, I don't think she's ever seen the color of your eyes. I was going through old conversations of ours and I found the day where you told me you first loved me and I remembered the feeling of my heart being torn in two. You gave me everything I've ever needed and I know I could never love you the way you need but who knows if you'll love me in the morning.
I remember a quote running through my head, quick and simple. “I was only a chapter in her life, but she was my entire story.”
I heard the beeping. It was heart stoppingly loud and I couldn’t think anymore. It broke my entire train of thought as I tried to desperately get rid of it. The sobbing soon followed. It was disturbing how loud it was in my head, almost as if someone was screaming in the middle of their crying.
That’s when I woke up. I slowly regained the feeling back into my fingertips, then my hands, then my arms, then my shoulders and chest, my torso soon followed, then my legs, then my feet. It was odd to have my body back in my possession.
My eyes slowly opened as I saw her there. My whole body started shaking as Lucille sat in the chair next to me, sobbing. The panic I felt in my chest when I was thinking about Alice had returned. What had happened? Where have I gone? Why am I alive? Questions I presumed would not be answered.
Lucille sat up in her chair, took my hand and whispered, “You’ve been gone for so long.” It hit me like a trainwreck. None of it was real. Alice wasn’t real. Everything I’ve felt, the hell I’ve gone through, it was my coma induced fantasy.
The first phrase to come out of my mouth was simple. “She was my entire story.”