This chapter is very sad and depressing but if you can survive this i'll try to make sure it gets better if you keep reading. starts from just after Ste is pulled away from Brendan at the hospital
I feel like I can't breathe. Like there's no reason to any more. The air aches with loneliness, reeks of pain and too many words whispered and too many left unsaid. My movements are clumsy and heavy as though a rope is tied between us and every step he takes away from me pulls my soul further from my body until I'm nothing but an empty sack on useless bones and blood that's burning as it tries to follow him, escape from the prison of my lonely flesh. I find myself outside, blue sky and sound of cars, of birds, of life startling me. It never occurred to me that the rest of the world could be continuing the way it always has when mine has stopped completely. The pavement, hard beneath my dragging feet, feels endless as I stumble towards my car, working on some kind of homing instinct rather than rational thought. In my head all I see is him, the glazed eyes, the raised hand, the black hair which is a shade lighter than the darkness in his heart.
The slamming of the car door echoes, adds to the deafening screaming inside my own head, the remnants of the howls which had fallen on deaf ears as I was torn from the room, from him, from all that I had left. I grip the steering wheel, glad of something solid and real to grasp onto to stop myself slipping from reality and allowing the depths of despair to consume me, to let the pain take over and to let it all hit me. He's really gone. The salty tears pool in the corner of my mouth as though they were afraid to drop from my cheeks and fall alone. My lips tingle but not from the cut that pierces the lower one. They tingle from the ghost of so many kisses, so much love, so much passion. Now they press together, each one desperate to give the comfort the other so badly craves. People walk by, stare in but quickly avert their gaze, worried that if they look at me too long then my torment will become theirs. I'm not sure how long I sit there watching the sky and trying to tell myself as long as we're both under it that he's not really so far away. But even the sky seems sad, seems lower today, as if it were as fragile as my heart and just as close to collapsing in on itself. I grip the steering wheel tighter the whiter my knuckles become, sure that if I had just held on to him this tightly then nothing would have changed. Eventually, a deep rumbling in my stomach alerts me to the fact that I've not eaten or slept for hours. My whole body aches like my brain is determined to make this pain physical so that it can be healed with a few pills and a day in bed. The alternative is too destructive to even consider. I know I shouldn't drive in this trance, that I'm likely to cause an accident. I start the engine regardless.
Much to my despair, I make it home alive. The smell as I open the door sickens me. It smells like home, like love and happiness and everything that I've lost. I throw open a window and instantly shut it again, don't want the world to see me like this. I steady myself against the work top. I feel drunk without the warmth, without the oblivion and without the courage; just feel the confusion and the hangover. I close my eyes but immediately open them again, the sight of him inside my eyelids worse than anything beyond them. My hand closes around a bottle and I drink from it, not even aware of what it is, just know that it scalds to swallow. I can hear the laughter, eerily faint, even in my head. I can see empty figures sitting at the table, at the sink, on the sofa. I remember what it felt like to finally have everything I'd ever wanted. That's when I see it. The picture. Pinned pride of place on the kitchen wall, illuminated by the garish yellow wallpaper beneath it. Messy but colourful and full of the innocence and joy that only a child could relay onto paper. The crooked smiles of the two men staring up from the page seem mocking and cruel now, their linked hands a symbol of their unity in their triumph, safe in the knowledge that their happiness is immortalised in crayon while mine is lost and broken and erased without leaving any sign of it ever existing. My fingers trace the blonde hair of the little girl stick figure, move to the blue eyes of the little cartoon boy and finally to the pink lips of the tallest man. My legs fold just as easily as the paper as I find myself a heap on the floor, clutching the crumpled picture to my chest as though it could hold in my heart and stop it from disappearing along with my future.
The bed is cold and empty, too large for just me. I'm drawn to the dent in the mattress by the same force of nature that pulled me to the man who used to occupy it. A few black hairs are still dusted across the pillow and I resist the urge to reach across and hug it for fear of removing what little trace of him remains. I tighten the cord on this hoodie, his hoodie and let the smell of him envelope me, consume me until I eventually fall asleep pretending that the arms I've wrapped around myself are his. My dreams won't let me fool myself so easily though. I see him through a window, hammer on it until my knuckles are bloody and my throat is scratchy by screaming his name but he doesn't see me. Then the window turns dark, becomes smaller and smaller and just before it vanishes completely he turns and looks me right in the eye and reaches out as though the last thing he wants is for me to disappear. I wake up screaming his name for the fifth time that night and decide that this is a hopeless task.
The air outside is appropriately cold and damp. It's both refreshing and subduing. The perks of living in such a dodgy area is that there's always an off licence open in the early hours that don't care why you want a litre bottle of vodka at 3am and ask no questions about your black eye or your cut lip. I find a wall to perch against under a huge tree in a dark lane where no one could see me if they were to walk past which is unlikely at this time of night. I discard the top of the bottle, flicking it over the wall and into the undergrowth behind me. I won't be needing it. The first swig is vile, pure alcohol which my throat protests against and tries to reject but I don't let it. By my third swig I'm numb to everything but the cold liquid sliding down my chest filling trying to fill all the holes that he left. An image flashes through my mind of water pouring out of holes in my body like when people get shot in bad cartoons.
I sit and imagine it until the bottle is empty and I can't seem to get my legs to straighten and it's no longer just the dark that's blinding me. My head is spinning, the dizziness of intoxication replacing the swirling of anguish that's had me dizzy since long before I took my first sip. I drag myself along the wall, holding myself up on weak arms, frequently stumbling but feeling nothing when I hit the ground. I throw up twice and consequently feel emptier than I did before. Eventually I fall and don't bother to get up again. I curl up on the ground with only his hoodie to protect me from the drizzle that's descended. I pass out praying that I never wake up. It doesn't really matter if I do though. I'm dead inside anyway.