Intoxicated

We’re dancing. The world spins around me, blurred. I’m happy again. Genuinely happy, or at least convincingly. And to a degree I no longer reach in sober life. I’m smiling and flirting. Whispering heartfelt falsehoods in the ears of loved ones, and ones less so. But I care. I honestly care. This I’ll remember even when all of my other pretenses are revealed. I making friends, pining after lovers, and painting myself a fool. Or worse.

What fun we have.

And what pain. Tomorrow morning I’ll hate you. You will have embarrassed me, I’ll say. Neither of us will believe it. Nor will anyone else. It’s not the first time. It’s not even the hundredth. By now my rationalizations fail even to impress myself. I’ll swear you away, but my words will be hollow. No one will listen.

I know I have a problem. I have collected too many regrets to pretend otherwise. I’m too old now to ignore you as novel, or as a youthful indulgence. Binges have become habits, and real life has presented her ultimatum. Soon I must choose.

But it is more difficult than it should be. My best recent memories are seen only through your poisonous haze. Trading away my last un-faded moments seems foolish, and too high a price. Perhaps there’s another way. Perhaps not.

You’ll destroy me, eventually. There can be no other outcome. You’re addictive, and I’m obsessive-compulsive. We do not mix except in fire. I’ll hasten the end; a twist of the knife that I might better enjoy the last of the blade. Tragic if it weren’t so pathetic. And predictable. But there is no other ending.