One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, four – I suck down drinks with a wince until I’m drunk enough to suck ‘em down and not wince. It’s Friday, the start of the weekend, and that means I’ve got a full week of shit to forget about, just like every other weekend that ever has been and probably ever will be. Tonight I won’t remember that exam I failed on Tuesday or that on Wednesday I cheated on my girlfriend for the second time. By midnight I won’t remember exactly how many drinks I’ve had or exactly what bar I’m at. I’ll forget that I was late on my rent payment yet again this month due to my total inability to save money for important things.

I’ll become the here and the now and the music and the lights and the laughter and the touching and the friendship and the youth. For a short period I’ll take my life into my own hands.

The thing about alcohol, though, is that it’s called a depressant for a reason. Once I come down, I’ll find myself down some alley or on some curb, my head in my hands and my girl rubbing my back and doing her best to stop my tears. But I won’t stop crying because all of a sudden I remember that exam I failed which is just the latest of many keeping me from graduating. I remember my continuing infidelity, my financial instability. But I especially remember the drunken car crash that killed my brother and left me without a scratch.

He was going to be a dad. He never knew. Kaila is 18 weeks old now, and she will never forgive me when she’s grown. Neither will her mother, or my own. My dad hasn’t spoken to me in over six months. He hates me, and I would hate me, too. I do hate me. I can’t blame any of them.

All I can do is try to forget, one drink at a time, one night at a time.

Tomorrow I can try again.

Black, perfect black. Not the fake, almost-black-but-kinda-gray black. Real black. That’s what I feel inside of me all the time. There is no light, just the absence of it. There is no color, no warmth, just dark, cold, solid blackness that grows bit by bit each day. It started as a numbness in my fingers, right at the very tips. After a while it started to tingle, like when your leg falls asleep. The tingling spread through the rest of my hands and up my arms. Then the tingle disappeared. Or maybe it’s still there, but I went from recognizing that dull ache of numbness to feeling nothing at all. Just the absence of it.

Whenever I feel the tingle, I know I’m about to lose more of myself to the dark. But when the nothingness got to my memory, it took over even quicker there than anywhere else. The tingle never came. All I can remember is the black. I know there must have been a time before it. A time of color and warmth. There must have been. Right?

People I vaguely recognize try to talk to me sometimes, or rather they talk at me, because I don’t really hear them. My hearing is on its way out. They give up soon enough because they figure I’m ignoring them, but the truth is that I don’t know how to tell them I don’t understand their attempts. I stopped speaking a long time ago. I don’t remember my last words.

On the days when I manage to do more than count the ringlets in the wooden coffee table, I dig out the same lighter I’ve had in a junk drawer since a one-night-stand left it here two years ago, and I experiment with the flame. I’m slowly turning the mahogany finish to a charred ebony color, and I hold my hand far too close to the flame than is normally safe.

I wish I could feel it, but it won’t be long before the black diminishes my hope, too. Then I won’t wish anymore. I’ll just be.

I’ll just be the black. I’ll just be the nothing.

I’ve been struggling for the past few days, as if my text posts didn’t enumerate that clearly enough. It’s been a combination of a few things, and I’ve been dealing with it the only way I know how.

Doing nothing. Just letting my thoughts and my feelings get the best of me. I think I’m slowly getting a grip, though, and tomorrow should help a lot. I’m going to stay at the beach for a couple of days, right on the ocean in a little cottage that my family rents out every year.

I’m just going to take some time to relax, have some fun, drink lots of alcohol, and hopefully when I come back I can figure everything out with my personal life.