A Bottle of Courage

It’s taken me years and a spoilt liver to realise that I never wanted to get over you. I always wanted to stay your lover. The hickies you so loving lay on my bare skin might have faded but my fingers still search for the slight bruise. It’s taken my deathbed to show me that our love is eternal. It’s taken a lifetime without you to not be afraid anymore and say that I stopped living the day you stopped breathing.

The moment is still clearly etched in my brain. You were lying still on the floor, your back to me, as a pool of blood began to sprawl outwards. I never wanted to kill you; I just wanted to stop you. I saw you that day with a suitcase in hand, ready to leave me for another man, a real man and I panicked. I saw in the bundle you had packed, flashes of the life we would never have. I remembered the names for children we had decided together as we lay entwined in bed and all I could think of were the unborn foetuses that we never would have a chance to nurture. I must have been hallucinating, for I can swear that your blood ran along the contours their little feet would have made on our floor. But the floor of just bricks and steel, it never really had a chance to become a home.

Ironically, even over your dead body, the wind chime you had hung played musically with my feelings. There was guilt, but it was overpowered by the effervescence of relief. If you had left I would have never known family dinners, I would have never known home cooked meals and instead I would have known just the panties of strange women and a venereal disease or two.

In that one moment that I struck your head with the bat we’d bought for our kids to play with, you saved me from a life of degeneration. I would have seen little and sensed little if only I had missed your head and you had swiftly run away. It might surprise you and if you had known maybe you might not have wanted to leave, but I remember when we bought the bat.

It was a week after our marriage, a hurried affair much like our courtship had been. For me you were a girl who could tolerate me and for you I was nothing like your ex-boyfriend. It was a match made in heaven. You thought I needed repair, I never did understand what made you feel I was broken in the first place. But after the first time you led me to your bed and let me explore you between the sheets, I was ready to ditch the truth and say I was broken just to keep you around.

It was a good few months when you first came into my life. Your excitement was infectious and I was interested not only your negligee but also of the long talks that you engaged me in. My world of books had till that point permitted little time for human interaction. Your destiny brought you to me like a much needed bookmark. Coincidentally, the bookmark you gave me was the first and last I ever owned. I never did finish the book I had left in it.

I want you to know that it wasn’t rage that made me strike you, it was compassion. I wanted for you to hear what I had to say and since you stole the literary world for me, I did it the only human way you taught me to; through physical contact.

Your death meant I was ostracised. Those dinner friends you had invited no longer gave me a reason to use the fancy cutlery we had picked out. It was never my in-laws on the other side of the phone. Even the dog you had insisted we adopt, found solace in the life of a stray. The black mutt ran off into a dark night and I never saw him again. I could have stopped him, but I had you and he didn’t matter.

It was about that time that I had to choose between cigarettes and alcohol. I had read that both were powerful intoxicants who could grant you glimpses of the life you wanted. Since my father had died of cancer I naturally gravitated towards alcohol. First it was an innocent glass or two. They made dinner seem more bearable since my cooking didn’t match up to yours and indeed even the simplest of the dishes I attempted were terrible.

Alcohol also facilitated conversations and conversations I did have. For a long time I thought I had got loony and I was talking to myself, but then the truth dawned on me. I was talking to you, for you had never left, I had stopped you. Alcohol was the bottle of courage that an introvert like me had always needed.

Your replies were always just silence, nothing more and nothing less. Although, I hadn’t expected it, your quietness made me angsty. Many times there was a growing agitation in my mind and to forget that I upped my dosage. If you ask me, I think you’d better be able to mark out the point when I graduated from few glasses to few bottles since you never did drink at any of those instances.

I guess your silence made me wonder whether you were unhappy that I had stopped you, for you never did speak about the children that you wanted and you never did unpack that suitcase. It just sat beside the door for all my years tormenting me.

Now, I’m just a beaten down man who pukes up blood, that all I have left. But I feel if there’s a world after this, then I’m heading your way. This time don’t answer. Just stay silent if you’ll have me once I’m there.