In Remission From A Real Mood
You carefully pour two fingers of scotch into the stark clean lines of the tumbler. Your actions calm and seemingly civilized within the depth of ritual even though you know you'll end up finishing most of the bottle. You are not ready to give up on the image of perfect self control just yet.
And as you wince against the taste you start to clinically pull what was left of your life apart. You gauge the pain like a scientist, some thoughts simply sting, others feel like a gaping wound, like part of you is missing and you have only just woken to its absence. It was morbid but you had never claimed to be anything but.
Alone you can dwell on it. That little nagging thing, a dirty flaw in your psychology that you can not speak of. You are drawn to powerful and controlling men. With the third time being anything but the charm you can no longer pass them off as second best, a safety net, when you can never have what your heart desires.
It's like each man is a worse version of the first two men in your life. Like a print slowly running out of ink or how clones always go wrong in films. Sometimes you panic on a crowded street because it seems like everyone is wearing masks. And it's like those damn ones the guys wore to that cruel front of a stag do. It had unnerved you to see the unmoving replicated faces of your then fiancé even before you understood the truth of what happened. Now you have nightmares of that thing tainting Liam till the light finally fades from those trusting blue eyes.
Sometimes you give Frank, Paul's face or more often Tony's and try to work out where the lines blur. If they all the same man and the way they make you hurt is something you seek. Men do silly things for you. They start fires and leave you factories and save you from a life of desolation or lock girls in the trunk of their cars. But you don't think you ever asked to be raped. Only you can't separate that night from the time Paul almost fought your brother because you were his. Or the way Tony broke into your flat and took you to bed. You have trouble separating any of it anymore because everything you understood has been broken.
Even in death none of them leave you besides the one you wanted more than you understood. Sometimes it feels as if Frank still lives in your mind and that one day he will be strong enough to take control of your body and make you do terrible, terrible things.
The stress of it all makes Peter drink and smoke indoors. The smell of it lingers on your fingers and lips or in the waves of your hair; it moves with you and mocks his absence. Because good men do silly things because of you too, they lie about death, declare their love and set themselves upon a sacrificial stone. You don't think you deserve them. You are not worthy of such life destroying dedication. Maybe Frank finally understood that in the end.
But now Peter sits in a cell for you. It's like you are left with the worst part of him and an extensive hidden collection of scotch. It's all you ever have.