My Greatest Act Of Love

Loving, losing, leaving and - shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.

Song of the week: When it’s cold I’d like to die by Moby

I’m twenty-five and at a party of a friend of a friend. We’ve turned into our parents already the way we only ever sing to the songs that are so familiar. It’s warm out and the door stays open, welcoming a constant stream in and out of people. I join them occasionally, cigarette in hand. It’s the only habit I always seem to go home to.

“Need a lighter?” A man says as I struggle with my own, but just in time, it ignites. He puts his offer back in his pocket, “do you want some of this?” He shows me a bottle in his hand of something expensive looking.

“I don’t drink.”

“Why?” He asks bemused.

“I’ve never really liked it.” I lie.

“How can you not like drinking?”

“Health reasons,” I suggest as I smoke. He understands and he disappears.

I say this often. I say it on first dates and sometimes they marvel at my discipline but the reality is much uglier; I have been indulgent. I have loved and been loved more than anyone that I know. I have gorged myself fat on it, drank great glasses of love and made myself sick on it. I would never say no, I could keep up.

“Do you miss it?” People often ask,

“No.” I lie and I think about how I’m awfully good at living without something I once craved. To miss something I know is bad for me has become intrinsic to who I am.

I am a teenager and a different version of myself - I am in love. All consuming and life altering, I can’t think about anything else. He pressed hard on my heart till a whole new world fell out. New friends, new experiences, new everything. When I think about alcohol, at first, I think about this. I think about warm fields and interlocked hands. I think about cramped bathrooms of house parties where everything was fun. I think about never feeling fear down dark streets because I was never alone.

Every meal shared, mood mirrored, and thought spoken - a perfect blend of two always. I’d be watched and always watching. Listening and listened to. The sound of his heartbeat pounding in sync against the pulse of my ear each night, then later the sound of his soft breath deepening into sleep. As months blur to years, you become one - he loved to drink and I loved him.

One of the most important parts of life is knowing when to leave the party. I have got good at leaving but it took half of me longer. I watched him in the morning light, sick and bruised, it wasn’t fun anymore.

“It’s normal” He said as he lost his job for turning up drunk.

“Back to normal.” Said the paramedic checking his heart.

“Normal.” I said to myself in the mirror. A myriad of lies I had said years after he was gone to protect the only person I’d ever truly loved.

“I don’t want to be sober.” He said.

“We can do it together. Watch me.” I held out my hand.

*

Now, you live in a new city with a bigger bed, you sprawl out into it and have not found real love since. Not for a lack of trying but for a failure to make it the right shape. You delight in new experiences and put jaw to ceiling but like chasing a dragon it is not close. Pockets of half-lived love stories embedded into notebooks you don’t mind leaving unfinished. A new boyfriend offers you his beer and you decline, I can’t do it. You break up the next day.

Sobriety and singledom have found themselves twisted up in each other. It has been three years since you broke up and you have never been intoxicated without him; sometimes I think that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.

Now, it’s August. You’re alone, though you don’t feel like it anymore. It will be 5 years since you last drank come Autumn, one night you go to the pub with friends and you decide to have a beer. Nothing happens. It’s cold and the way you remember it. Nothing bad happens. You’re safe. You can let it go now.

They say with each relationship you should take what you love about them with you; if he’s a pianist, learn piano, that kind of thing. Sometimes I’m so loyal with my love it outlasts the ones I shared it with and I keep hold of promises far after I’m expected to. I don’t need to hold onto someone else’s sobriety for them anymore, I can let go.

You used to whisper in bed that you’d die for each other, now you wish that you had promised to live instead. One day, you’ll realise that’s exactly what you have done; just not together.

-Shit, I think my prefrontal cortex just developed.