The light switch

“Do you also want to turn off the lights?” He inquired with a smirk on his face. I felt him eyeing me down, even thought we were the same height, the entire time he was in my house I could swear it was the only way he looked at me. He grabbed around my waste tightly, I could see every hint of emerald in his eyes even if I was unable to look directly at them for very long.

I stared at the empty bottle of beer I left in my desk, it was the first time I had had alcohol in weeks. Before I was in my room with this complete stranger, I had been in a doctor’s office with another stranger. She was a kind woman whose wrinkles accentuated her tendency to look worried, but when she smiled all of that disappeared, you could only focus on how sweet her expressions framed her out to be. The room was dark, not so much in the lighting, but as I passed thru its doors I could feel the moody sensation of it, a certain air of hesitation and despair that darkened the corners and filled up the entire atmosphere. It felt useless to hold back tears after only a few seconds of being there.

The woman and I talked, and when I felt like my throat was letting go of all its knots I spoke like I have never spoken in my life. It did not feel like words coming out of my lips, they felt like confessions spoken in signals, as if I was communicating with an entire new language that had not yet been invented, and somehow could only be expressed thru this fragile mind. Eventually, I lost track of time, and it felt like I had been there for half of my life.

Time becomes a funny thing when you start scrutinizing your own capacities. In a dark room with a strange woman I was able to question everything, if I was still able to love, to take care of myself, and worst of all, to ever become anything different from what the past year had made of me. I felt like a parody of myself, a pretender of feelings I once was able to feel but that now evaded me like so many people did before.

I sat on that room and cried while telling her secrets that, looking back now, I should have never kept to myself. And the strangest thing came out of it. There wasn’t laughter, nor anything else to prove. She listened to it all, and said we would take care of it. That moment gave me a sort of excitement that had never entered my body before. It all felt like I had been given a new chance in life, and for the first time since I entered that room, I started crying out of joy. The tears flowed down my face as if to wash me out of all the hopelessness that had so forcefully marked me. I came out of that place with a prescription and a mind full of positive outlooks.

So I had not had alcohol since then. It is not as if it was prohibited, that was made clear. But I still wanted to give my best shot at it, so I avoided drinking at all costs and hoped this would make a difference.

However, there I was, the scent of barley exuding from lips and tainting my tongue. It wasn’t something I had planned, but when that man knocked on my door I knew I needed something to not feel utterly terrified with the prospect of having a date over. His name could have been Damian, or Daniel, even David for that matter. I was still in university by that point, but he had a solid job as a real estate agent and graduated college when I was still in middle school. He was an interesting figure for sure, his hair trickled down with beautifully messy curls, his arms were strong, his beard haphazardly growing around his jawline. He wasn’t unattractive, but when I opened my door I could feel my body retrieving. It had nothing to do with how he looked, or maybe it had, I don’t quite know. I simply hesitated, and felt a sort of unwillingness to have him be present in my house. But I knew why I had asked him over, so I chewed down on those paranoias and drank a beer with him on my couch. Half an hour after that, we were in my room.

I had become single just three weeks prior, and a little after that I started my medication. In my stupid and juvenile dreams I hoped that the pills would make a difference with me and my ex-lover, that somehow it could turn the fights into support, the words that were screamed into whispers of tenderness and warmth. Peter was a good man, even though he couldn’t be good to me. In thoughts where I flagellated my self-worth I told myself it was all me, we became that because of how I acted. I could not care for myself, and therefore I could not care for anything else. He was once endearing, he held my hand and looked in my eyes when I was speaking. Now he could barely hold his screams when I was crying, I had seen fury in his eyes that made him loose control and look like the devil.

I had become sick, although I did not know it. Peter did not as well. He assumed I had just become someone else, a person unable to deal with feelings, with life itself. And I had enjoyed every moment on his side until something else took control of me. I spent so long blaming it all on myself, on how I could never be strong enough to cope with things to the point I tore me and my lover apart. It wrecked me to imagine that it was all on me.

But Peter never helped. He sat on the borders of my melancholy, but never came close enough to hold it. He stared at a distance and waited for it to get better. He loved me as to not leave so soon, but never cared to learn how to help me hold the weight of the feelings that maimed me. So I picked up the pieces he helped break by myself. I found out it was a sickness, and that helped me comprehend things a little better. But I still hoped we would find our way, maybe if I could understand myself a little better he could too. I remembered the times I was on the verge of falling asleep and he whispered “I love you” in my ear, hoping those memories wouldn’t be the last time.

One day, the thought that it was all permanent, and that I had to make peace with it struck me profoundly. But that wasn’t the only thing. The medication gave me a new sense of life. I had been brought down to the worst thoughts a person could have about themselves, I caved with the pressure of having to keep myself alive when I did not want to, I got swallowed within the abysm of apathy, the senseless cruelty of a mind that wishes to cease its existence. For the first time, the endless incoherence of thoughts that wished to harm the body started to stop.

But I still needed to feel something else, so I called a stranger. Maybe he could help me fix it as well, maybe I could replace the image of Peter’s face with his. Maybe he could help me feel love again. Maybe he could wash away the memories of feeling alone. Maybe he could make me scream until I forgot what the sound of my voice crying felt like. Maybe, just maybe, he was the key to make the medication function in such a way that I would never have to experience darkness once again.

So I responded “yes” as I made my way to the light switch.  

I sat on my bathroom afterwards. Tears falling from my eyes. I never saw him again.