I'm Sorry...But

“I’m sorry, Isaiah, I promise this is the last time,” I said with such confidence and certainty, knowing it wasn’t the least bit true. I looked him dead in his eyes, and lied to him, yet again.

“I believe you,” was his gracious answer, with his warm smile, and I knew in my heart that he meant it. I knew that was supposed to mean something, the genuine warmth to him was supposed to be enough to make me hold on. But it just wasn't. 

Even after he’s accepted me back time and time again, after the way I’ve hurt him so deeply it’s almost inexplicable. He always wants to think this will be the last time I fall off the wagon per se. The last time he’ll have to forgive me and our relationship is forced to start over. The last time I’ll have the capacity to do this and that would mean the end of us indefinitely. 

And yet we are stuck in this endless cycle. I lie, he believes me, my lie is brought to light, his heart is broken, I beg him to understand and promise never to do it again, he accepts the apology, we make up, everything goes back to normal, then I feel the need to go back to that addicting place. To the place where everything makes sense for me, where my life feels full, and where I am truly understood. 

So then, after a while, I lash out again. I let all the anger, despair, loneliness, and pain build up until it’s insufferable. All it takes is for him to look at me the wrong way, with just a small hint of distaste in his eye, or rather that’s just my imagination as well. Or maybe he does something so simple, so innocent, like not putting things back or forgetting to close a cabinet, and somehow it just triggers me into the pain and rage of my childhood.

Regardless, I start to scream about my ruined life, how he’s holding me back, and won’t allow for my happiness. Knowing it’s a mid-breakdown exaggeration only fuels my anger more and I yell louder. Yelling at him, yelling at myself, my parents and all the people who’ve done me wrong. Overall, I end up yelling at the world, cursing everyone from my grandmother to Adolf Hitler himself, mad at everyone and everything.

Simultaneously knowing I’m taking the pure rage I have with myself out on him only makes it burn hotter, but yet I’m also still trying to accept the fact that I’m not the monster I see in my nightmares. I’m instead the miracle product that resulted from the underlying trauma causing the intolerability of life. Even so, he doesn’t argue back. He sits there and listens, he hears me out, accepts every emotion I have, and tries his best to understand. 

“What can I do for you my love,” he pleads with me, willing to do anything in the world to ease the pain even the slightest. We both know exactly what I need, what I always need, we’d never come right out and say its name, the actuality of it was too great. He was waiting for the day that I would no longer find this to be my only comfort and I was waiting for the day I would finally fall victim to my destructive pleasure. 

“I just need to be alone, I think I’m gonna go take a bath.” The first lie is perhaps not the most harmful, but undoubtedly the gateway lie. Paving the road for a much worse lie, and I’ll keep following that road. All the way to the biggest lie, and say it with the worst of guilty pleasure.

“Okay, just please promise me you won’t hurt yourself. Please.” And the second lie within an ever so painful sequence is initiated. If only he didn’t force me to make promises I knew I could never keep. 

“I promise.” I say it so quickly, so emotionless, with so little evidence of a real person standing in front of him. Just robotic at this point, playing on the loop that was programmed for me by an evil spirit in possession of my soul.

“Alright, I love you.” He’ll never say he believes me, but he’ll always wait for the day he wholeheartedly relax knowing I will walk out of that bathroom just as healthy as I was when I walked in. He tells me he loves me in his desperate attempts that will be enough to keep me here, but I know in my soul that love just isn’t enough for me. 

He once told me that when he said “I love you more” it meant that he loved me more than he loved himself. And I hated myself for that because it was his response to my statement of, “I love me more than you.”

I thought it was the right way to feel, after years of toxic relationships and various therapists, I thought I’d finally learned how to be happy and healthy. Then he seemed to prove all those years of self-work invalid, making me doubt multiple pieces of my life. It had made me feel like I was to one day be the bad guy in his story and it would be my responsibility to walk away. To end things, to be the strong one, the brave one, the responsible one. 

My mind sometimes drifts to when we met, how I felt, what I needed, and how he saved me. I also think of how I never really feel safe in his arms anymore, when realistically I provide the safety, how I no longer craved him for comfort, but rather solidarity. I no longer trusted him, and decided to take the initiative and save us both. I miss the early days, although sometimes it feels like the honeymoon stage ended when we moved in together. 

“I love you the mostest,” I say it as cheery as I can, elucidating the horrid truth to my plan set in motion. 

And on that note, I disappear into the bathroom down the hall and begin running the water. I lock the door behind me and light the candle that sits on the tank of the toilet. I slowly undress, imagining myself as a character in one of my favorite shows, perhaps about to be attacked by a serial killer once I enter the shower. Or I begin my fantasy about a tragic and untimely death that paints me as a hero while I let the water warm up.

I gracefully dip into the plain white tub with moss-green tiles across the corresponding walls and use my right big toe to shut off the cold water, then my left for the hot. I start to relax back and let my entire body soak, allowing the peppermint epsom salt to do its work. 

I run my fingers across the neatly caulked greenish tile, finding the one I’d secretly renovated months ago. I’d pulled the tile from the wall and cut out a hole behind it, with the knowledge that nothing important was back there gained during our real bathroom renovation. I made it my hiding spot for my secret stash. Isaiah never knew how I actually got it in and out, and I manifested so hard he never would find this spot. 

I peel the tile away, revealing my cubby and grab my required substance to fuel this insatiable temptation. Housing 6 kitchen knives, a pre-drafter suicide letter, and an emergency will. I grabbed the longest one, and began my routine goodbyes I’d come to memorize so well.  

I dug the 10 inch butcher's knife into my right wrist first, blade pointed towards my face, knowing I would need a fully operational left hand to complete the task at hand. I push deep enough to make my toes curl, but I will not stop. I drag the knife upward across my arm, the skin and veins throughout the length of my forearm splintering open with blood spewing and spilling everywhere. Blood splattered along the wall, dripping down the curtain liner and turning the water of the bath red, as if a mini shark attack were happening right here in my bathroom. 

Using all my pain-fueled adrenaline, I shifted the knife to my right hand and repeated the process on my left arm. It took much longer to create a cut just as effective, but I’ve always been nothing if not persistent. This time, I couldn’t keep it in and I let out a loud, blood-curdling whimper-scream.

“Baby, are you okay?” Isaiah was already banging on the door, the same fear in his voice as the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. Except this time, unbeknownst to him, I may have gone a little too far. I knew it was too late to even answer him, and it was now time to wait. I didn’t want to face the music and refused to answer him. I would just wait for either the light to consume me or for Isaiah to break down the door, sobbing, with 911 already on the phone. 

I reached my bloody, mangled mess of arms over towards my tile, 6 inches from the wall closest to the window, and 7 tiles up from there. I tried gripping at my little corner as Isaiah’s voice started to fade softer and softer. Was he getting further? Was he actually walking away this time? As soon as I grasped the corner of the tile, I lost it again, and my grip was reduced to nothing. My arms grew heavy and I allowed them to slouch down into the water without resistance.

My eyes got heavier and heavier, and it was getting harder to breathe, it felt as if an entire set of dumbbells had been placed along my body restricting movement. The knife slipped from my hands and drifted somewhere into the bloody water, but I could no longer see it. It could have been touching somewhere on my body, puncturing me even, but I couldn’t figure out where that contact could be or if there even was any contact. My head got heavier and I tried to rest back on the corner of the tub. Yet my head dropped much swifter than intended and I felt the pressure of contact with the cool porcelain. 

The numbness began spreading, from the slits running vertically down my arms to their entirety, throughout my fingers and into my shoulders. Down my back, and throughout my legs, all the way to my toes. Creeping throughout my chest and up my neck until my entire body was nothing but limp deadweight without any feeling or indication it was still my body. I could no longer hear Isaiah, although it’s like I could feel him still outside the door, the presence of his anxiety perhaps. 

My thoughts slowed until I could only visualize fleeing glimpses of my childhood and they were the absolute worst of memories for one to possess. My mother often locked me in the dark, damp Michigan basement of our home, “keep your black ass all the way down there. I better not catch your bitch ass on that landing.” Because halfway in the basement wasn’t far enough away from her. 

All the times my dad swore this was the time, he would finally divorce her and do what was best for his children. Just for the next major traumatic life event to occur and all four of us winding up back under the same roof. The countless nights driving home from travel basketball, hearing the screams of my telling me how awful I am and what a disappointment to the family I was during the duration of practices. And how I didn’t score enough points during games. My parents shouting and pushing one another, then for me to get in the middle and try to make them stop, just for all the violence to be projected onto me instead. 

My final thoughts were of Isaiah. The first time we met, and the adorable boyish charm in his face. We’d begun as coworkers, or rather a subordinate and superior, he a manager and I an associate. I found myself drawn to his dark humor and before I knew it, I looked forward to clocking in to see him. I began sneaking peeks at the schedule, glancing quick enough to never draw suspicion that I was checking for anyone but myself and I never allowed the excitement to break through to my face. Never wanting to give away any hint of this secret crush I wasn’t even admitting to myself. 

He’d bend the rules for me a little, let me hit my vape and such out the back door, and would often stop over at my work station during slower periods. I remember the days of driving home, heart thumping aggressively in my chest, just thinking of the fleeting moments of flirtation, then the anxiety of wondering if it was just another one of my delusions. The first work trip we’d taken together we exchanged numbers to check which place we would stop for breakfast and all I could think was ‘I’m in’. 

We didn’t end up texting for a while, but luckily I was one day brave enough to concoct a perfectly plausible explanation as to why he should give me his snapchat. I wouldn’t know until later how much that meant to both of us. 

Our work trips eventually took us to another state with complete strangers and staying in the same hotel. And one night, after weeks of hanging out, and a few margaritas with a bottle of wine, our feelings for one another were brought to light. That first night we’d slept together it was so magical. He was respectful and warm, and I hadn’t slept so well in years leading up to that first night. I didn’t awaken once throughout the night, and I slept blissfully, seemingly the definition of peace and tranquility. 

We began dating in secret, keeping our love invisible at work, continuing on as if we were just the best of friends. There’d been one time I was irritated, and he’d come to the section I was cleaning to comfort me, I snapped at him in a way that must indicate a significant other because a customer nearby, an older black man, gave a small chuckle, a light shake of the head, and got the hell out of dodge. It was a miniscule memory, but I’d always loved it, and I never really told Isaiah that. The smirk on that man’s face, it gave the impression that he’d been married to his wife for many decades and that they’d had hundreds of similar interactions. I think our young love inspired him, or rather reminded him of his own youth, or maybe I just wanted to see some beauty in it that was never truly there.

When I was evicted from my home with nowhere to go, he offered to take me into his. And although I feel many of the reasons that I’ve driven to this point in time are because I feel trapped in this very house with nowhere to go, I hope he understands how grateful I am that he opened up his home to begin with. Although it may have been much easier for him to share his home then most, with much more support and resources, he’s loved me enough to stick around. No matter how many times we fight, no matter how many times we seem to fall apart, no matter how many times we end up in this exact same place. 

Atlas, Isaiah and I in bed, with our 2 beautiful dogs, the four of us cuddling close while watching a marvel movie. We’re happy and we’re in love, without worry of our future, without money troubles, without the stress and trauma, the memories that hang over us day in and day out. It’s a peaceful thought, a loving thought, a good thought.

The image of the four of us slowly begins to fade and I realize I’ve actually done it this time. I’ve finally gotten what I wanted. But is this what I want? Am I really ready to go? Isaiah doesn’t deserve this. How will it affect him? What if the doctors can’t save me this time?

And as the image of our happy family dissolved to nothing, I could feel my brain turning off, my heart’s last beat. The emptiness of death and hopelessness to the end of life. My final thought was regret, wishing I’d never picked up that stupid blade in the first place. Being scared of never seeing Isaiah again. Accepting the fact that I had achieved the very thing I’d always worked too hard to gain, and now that I’ve achieved it, I want nothing more than to take it back. 

How I’d do anything to gently kiss his lips again, or hear his giggle about one of our inside jokes. I yearn to hear his voice again, or for him to hear mine. I need to tell him how much I love him, and how sorry I am to have hurt him consistently. I desire to find a way we can figure it all out and I no longer need to be here or to do this. How will he ever know now? What is he feeling? I love you, Isaiah, I’m so, so sorry my love.

And then it was all over.