Alcohol and Tears

How time used to fly by so quickly.
We couldn’t slow it down no matter how hard we tried.
Until one day, time just stopped altogether.
And how it hasn’t started up again since.

Your booming laughter that echoed through the corridors of our meticulously crafted home is forever gone.
Your positive outlook and calming demeanor that carried me through my most difficult times are no more.
Together we experienced the highs and the lows, these short-term triumphs and the long-lasting setbacks.
Any glimmer of belief I had that life could still matter was lost forever when you took your last breath.

Birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays alone are constant, crushing reminders that hinder life’s advancement.
Purging possessions, locking up keepsakes, concealing emotions that are too intense to handle.
Switching routes, changing routines, and entering social situations as a different, less complete person.
Never sure when uninvited grief will overtake my body, crushing me to the point that I fall to a heap on the ground.

But now, I wash my nights away with alcohol and tears.
Alcohol and tears to remember…alcohol and tears to forget.
Evening rituals of draping myself across this sunken, stained couch, recalling the days when life made sense.
When despair overwhelms, the drinks begin to flow; small puddles form, the simplest of formalities to get me to tomorrow.

How time used to fly by so quickly.
We couldn’t slow it down no matter how hard we tried.
Until one day, time just stopped altogether.
And how it hasn’t started up again since.

How your smile still lights up each of this room, only now it’s just through photographs and paintings.
How you still impact me, though now through written letters and recorded videos received when I’m less expecting them. 
Together we navigated all of life’s ups and downs, but here I am now, left alone, falling short in all that I do.
When you were taken, much of me died as well, leaving me without the will to carry on.

This deep fog clutters my mind; my only consistent is the profound mourning that accompanies me wherever I go.
This scurrying mind, the only certainty with each day is that triggers, both old and new, will find ways to knock me around.
Replaying memories, unable to distinguish between fantasy and reality, picking the path laced with unyielding destruction. 
I am terrified of losing these loving images, at one time etched in my mind but now fading with the day’s anxieties. 

But now, I wash my nights away with alcohol and tears.
Alcohol and tears to remember…alcohol and tears to forget.
Our perfectly imperfect little life, one that was rooted in faith, hope, and love, suddenly ripped from beneath our feet.
This agony that fills my lungs and stiffens my bones will continue to pervade me until the day I, too, breathe my last breath.