Tip and Pour

You know it’s time to put it down, to stop, to take a rest and reset for the next day, but you also know that that’s not what will happen. The bottle beckons you, pulls you in and envelops you in the crystal clear liquid, promising you oblivion. It reprimands you for stopping; tugs at your gut in dry heaves and clutches bile in your throat when you tempt the bottle not to tip towards your lips. There hasn’t been the need for a glass in a long time; glasses are used for appearances and sharing, neither of which have been a priority in months.

   The bottle tips and pours and the liquid pools with warmth in your belly, reminiscent of the feeling of old lovers and being loved, but the lovers are long gone and this is the only place where the warmth can be found. Like an adulterer, you know this is wrong, that people will end up hurt again when they find your body stretched languidly on the bed, the floor, the tiles in the bathroom, but the desire is too deep to care what they think. They will ultimately leave you too, but the bottle never will.

   You roll from the bed, the bottle clutched in a hand and stroll around in your underwear, marveling at the musical sloshing by your side. How the bottle never seems to empty is mesmerizing to you. How it tips and pours, tips and pours, but there is always another bottle, always another gulp to be had when this one runs out. There are a million, a billion even, just waiting to be picked up and loved and cherished; willing to give the fullness that another human being can’t seem to fill. You fill up while the bottle empties out, never angry that it gives much more than you give to it. You could leave the bottle out in the cold overnight, but it would still be waiting for you in the morning like a wife that doesn’t know when to run away for good.

   The void is coming, like it always does. This incredibly strange, overwhelming, and somehow empowering void that will steal you away for a few minutes. Maybe it’ll steal you away for a few hours this time and the disappointment on your mother’s face will simply be a hazy memory upon awakening. Your ex-husband won’t matter and the friends that disappear more often than they appear won’t have any new things to say because they’ve said them all to you already. “Why can’t you just stop?” they beg and whine and plead, but stopping stopped being an option a long time ago. Can’t they see that? Can’t they understand that this is the only thing that feels right anymore in a world that no longer makes sense? This world that promised you could be anyone, be anything, do anything, but all you do is sleep and drink on repeat with no end in sight.

   It wasn’t always like this. The draw wasn’t always this strong. You remember a time when you didn’t need a whole bottle, you even remember a time when you didn’t need one at all, but those times are stretching further and further back into the recesses of your mind and only one thing is for sure: you do need it. Ironically enough, you need it to stay alive because stopping now, stopping without any warning would kill you. They told you that in the hospital when the bile turned bloody and you hadn’t eaten solid food in a week. You eye the full pill bottles on the dresser from the doctor, knowing you will need them if you decided to stop, but knowing you won’t at the same time.

   You need it, but you don’t always want to need it. If you could stop, you would. You try your best to explain that to them, to your mother, to your friends, to the man you once thought would love you forever., but they don’t seem to hear what you say. He promised you, “in sickness and in health” but where has he been? Was he not who introduced you to your new best friend? Was he not the enabler that suggested this could be fun? Did he not at one time tease you because you and the bottle were not as well-acquainted as other people? It was, of course, not his wish that you would end up like this, but he didn’t stop you. The bottled tipped and poured at home, by his hand. He didn’t bother to stop you because he wanted out from the beginning and it’s easier to be the victim, isn’t it? Even you know that. You’ve watched a lot of people make the choice to walk away and you can’t blame them; you stopped being fun and funny a long time ago.

   How empty can you get? It’s the bottle that wants to know. Can you become so small and so empty that you simply can slip inside, never to return? Do you tip and pour your insides too? Perhaps that is your ultimate goal now as you say goodbye to person after person, friend after friend, respect after trust, and so on and so forth. You asked for help a few times in the beginning, even went to some meetings like the other people who are just like you, but they aren’t just like you because at some point they could stop and you couldn’t. You couldn’t stop and you brought smaller bottles into the bathrooms with you and claimed to be getting better, but everyone saw through it and it only made you feel more empty and more useless and more powerless and drove you further and further on this path.

   He didn’t want to help you, you have to remember that. If he helped you, if he helped make you whole then you might actually get better. You might actually make friends and stop being miserable. You just might wake up one day a few months from now, a year, maybe two and look at the man you claimed to love, the man that brought you to this point, and you might realize that you don’t need him anymore. The haze will have lifted, not the haze from the alcohol, but the haze that comes with a young and blind kind of love. You would realize that you look at this man, this man you loved, this man you married, and come to the conclusion that you do not need him anymore.

   Will that happen with you and Tito? Though you love the bottle more than you have loved anyone in a long time, can you wake up one day and come to that same conclusion? Though it are not a person and it cannot love you back in the way that you want, will it embody the feeling of growth in the same way? A crutch is supposed to only be temporary.

   You can feel the depression continue to settle over you like the weighted blanket you keep on your bed. You thought that the alcohol would make it easier, because it really did in the beginning, but now it only makes it worse and the once lifted veil is getting closer and closer to closing. There will be no way out if things keep going like this, you know that.

   There will be no going back to the way things used to be if you keep going like this, you know that. There will be no mending of relationships and building of bridges if you keep going like this, you know that. There will come a time when you reach the point of no return, you know that.

   You sink onto the bed that’s been yours since you were a child and look around at the ramshackle remnants of your childhood mixed with what you took in the divorce. No matter how much you tip and pour into your mouth, you can’t fill the void with liquor.

   This love wants to kill you, you know that, too.