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For as long as I could remember, I have put up walls between men and me petrified of being abandoned, used for sex or falling in love with them. Love is dangerous. My mother and father were the perfect example of a wrecked and corrupt marriage and how much misery, depression and pain that love can bring to people. Love always causes people to downfall. Love was the reason that I had to support my father through his alcoholic problem. The reason that my mother abandoned me when I was younger. According to my dad, Mum was always the black sheep of the family often abandoning children and running off with men half her age for a chance at showbiz, fame and fortune but it always ended badly for her.
Growing up without a mother was tough. It caused me to be more vulnerable, gullible and easily mislead than other people and people used this to their advantage. Ever since my mother's departure when I was five, my father never dealt with it the right way and instead of confiding in someone like his sister, he punished himself for the fact that I was motherless and blamed himself for my bad start in life. Being drunk on alcohol was Dad's coping mechanism. He was an alcoholic. Years of alcohol abuse had left his cheeks rosy and his mind dull-witted. He knew drying out would be a painful process and he had no intention of ever going through it. He was determined to stay drunk until he died.
He never had a sober day if he could help it. He did everything drunk. He drove, shopped and went to work drunk. He never had less than four full bottles of Gin and a case of beer in the house. That was his emergency rations and he immediately went shopping if he reached that level. Yet he would never describe himself as an alcoholic. Mum got him into it. Years of returning home on a long, tiring day at work and watching her drink the beer bottle empty inspired him.
He wanted to know what was so great about the little bottle that everyone seemed to consume. But he never did it until after Mum left on Friday 13th. One day, he got his hands on one and twisted it open and took a small sip leaving a burning sensation in his body. A sensation for more. A yearning for something more than just orange juice. After that, he was hooked like a fish on a net. He knew that it was wrong for him to try but the sweet taste of the lethal drink lured him for more. Little did he know that was the beginning of his journey as an alcoholic. It changed everything especially his appearance- he was older than his true age mainly because years of drinking had robbed him of his youth. I watched it happen to my dad and now I am watching it happen to Lee.
I hate that. I hate watching him wake up with a splitting headache, intoxicating smell of alcohol and a very bad temper. I hated feeling so helpless . Why couldn't he just apeak to me? What was even worse was watching his depression envelope inside his mind causing him to shut me out and cry nerve-wracking tears. When he cried, there was a rawness to it like the pain was an open wound, it was never a trickle and never started in his eyes. It always begins as a feeling in his chest and depression in his mind, the only release being leaking water. The only way that his body chose to cope with his depression. All I ever wanted was for him to be able to communicate openly with me. To tell me how he is feeling. To tell me that he was scared. That he needed me not only just to put him to bed when he was to drunk to walk up the stairs without stumbling.
As I sob over my recent heartbreak with Lee, I couldn't help reminiscing about my last relationships and how love caused me to be weak to men and do anything to please them. After Billie died, I was empty like the grief was slowly consuming every part of me.
Grief.
Feels like emptiness in you heart, a shear of nothingness that somehow takes over and holds your soul and threatens to kill you entirely. It gives you this heavy feeling that's like the weight of the world is resting on your shoulders and there is nothing you can do to get out from under it. Its like this hole in your heart that is the shape of the one you lost and that makes you feel the need to wipe away any non-existent tears that you want to form but can't.
That was how I was feeling when I lost Billie like there was nothing that could mend this hole in my heart. It was like my heart was slowly dying and all I want was to feel his warm skin brushed against mine, to hear his sweet voice in my ear and to press my lips against his. But I will never feel his skin against mine again or hear his voice of even kiss him again. As I slowly walked up the stairs, I couldn't help crying over the ruins of my relationship with Lee. Walking into the bathroom, I gently removed my clothes and went into the shower embracing the hot water against my skin and the warm feeling that it have me inside.