How I got to where I am is a fairly boring story, but I’ll tell you anyway.  Things that happen to me are neither interesting nor extraordinary.  The average person who stands behind you in line at the supermarket could have a story like mine.  Or that person you cut off in traffic.  Or the one who serves you coffee in a café in the empowered part of town.

How I got here isn’t important, but why I’m here is.  It all started with a phone call.

How we met was that she rang my house by accident.  My phone number was one digit off that of the local music store, apparently, and she asked if I had a copy of anything by The Smiths.  I said, sure I did.  What did I have?  I blinked, and told her, as if I was reading a line from a script.  These weird moments in my day are generally everything that I live for - the knowledge that the human race does have the ability to randomise and improvise, and in general not live along strict guidelines.
When she asked how much, I told her I wasn’t selling.  The Smiths were to good to give up.  She said, “that’s a rather strange way to run a music store.”  And I told her that I guess it was a good thing I wasn’t running one.  I didn’t even know that a music store had a similar number, but it clicked during our conversation.  She laughed, and complimented me on my taste.

Not to draw the rest out, but it was my phone number that brought us together.  I guess if I believed in fate I would say maybe that played a part.  Or maybe if I believed in destiny I would have faith to say maybe it would have happened either way.  Whatever.

Over time, and over many discussions on life and music, we fell in love, as young couples tend to do.  It was really a happy time, since I’d never had anyone close to me like that before.  People tend to see others in love as outsiders, like nothing like that can exist for anyone except the stupid or the mindless romantics - and yes, they are two very different things.  But I was such a closed of circuit to the outside world, and she always managed to break through that.

Her friends clearly wondered what she saw in me, by the way they looked at me like I had a horn growing out of my forehead.  Cynically, I could say that my friends probably thought the exact same thing.  It was like I was two different people when I was in love with her than when I wasn’t.  I didn’t grow any less - bitter? cynical? whatever - when I was with her.  But it was always such an advantage with her.  We were two heroes escaping from the hands of the unjust world, and our distrust and cynicism was our shield against everything trying to hurt us - and we do mean everything, since everything is always against two such as we.  I’d stopped whining about the world and grew power from the fact that I saw things differently.

I wasn’t even sure it was real, except for the tiniest memories that haunt me when I’m trying to read a book, or listen to a song, or I’m driving home, or I’m at work trying to type away, and I will think of the briefest moment which I forgot all about, and it will flood back.  An example is drifting off to sleep in each other’s arms, only wake up with my hand under her face, like she needed the security to sleep.  And lying there for hours perfectly still as not to disturb such a moment.
Or, seeing a Calvin Klein-type model walking around with his shirt off, parading jeans or just seeking attention, and feeling a stab of bitterness and, I guess, jealousy at wanting to look like that.  And hearing a mocking laughter emit from beside me as she wrapped her arms around me like there was nothing in the world more to want that what she had.

And how she had me.  I always pictured never, ever being with anyone else.  Nights when I used to sit alone breathing, thinking, drinking, brooding, contemplating suicide and the like, they were all gone because of this passion which had replaced it.  There was never going to be this again, I knew that.  Naïve as it may sound, I still believe it today.

And I guess that is where it fell apart, since all good things must end.  I don’t even know exactly what happened.  Communication broke down.  In retrospect, all we ever had was communication.  It’s all anyone has.  What else is there?  We could live together and have wonderfully successful jobs and be filthy rich, but it’s nothing at all if you’re alone.

It is hard to explain how it happened, but in the end it was just a lack of effort to remain as one unit when we were so individual.  When she wouldn’t call, I couldn’t call her all the time, wondering when she would care again.  I loved her to death, but to seek out what you want is gluttony, I guess.  I would gladly take her, but not if she didn’t want me.

Days and months seemed to meld together.  While I’d stay sane and be vaguely morbid in my suburban alcoholic way, drinking to forget or to remember, it didn’t matter.  The vague suicide attempts with weak drugs were just ways of proving I still cared enough to show emotion, I guess.  Sometimes I’d see a girl in the street who looked sort of like her and wonder if she’d like me in return, just maybe.

After a fair while, I sort of realised it was over.  Not completely, but a vague voice in my mind told me to let go.  There’s nothing there, really.  I even sought relationships with new people who might give me a feeling I had once before.  But it never worked.  I felt like an idiot who walked into the wrong classroom at school and was too embarrassed to leave, even though he knew nothing about quantum mechanics.  It was such a lie, and I felt like I was doing a really bad job of faking it in the end.  Nothing ever lasted.  But what does?

It wasn’t until about three or four years later when nothing had changed that I really woke up and saw that something was wrong in my life.  I was waiting for something to happen that wasn’t going to.

The epiphany happened a couple of days ago.  In a vaguely reminiscent and morbid way, I roamed a random music store looking for Smiths CD’s.  And, no, it wasn’t the store whose number was so similar to mine.  I’d moved a few times since then, and didn’t really expect to see it again.  As apt as it may have been, it was a different store.

The store didn’t have any Smiths, but it did stock a gem Elliott Smith CD - a virtual rarity in the music retailer world we now live in as opposed to a music “store”.  Flipping it over and over in my hands, I knew I had to have it.  I already owned it, but I knew a lot of other people who would gladly buy it back off me, and would kill me for not getting it then and there.  I felt a little guilty at being so greedy, hoarding Elliott for myself, but life can be tough, I guess.

But a hand reached out and took it from me, and said, “I’ve been looking for this.”  I knew it was her just from the smell the wafted with her.  Her teeth seemed so well lubricated that the practically reflected the lights with their glare.  Her half stare-half looking away mannerisms drove me nuts, like she was trying to tell me she cared without trying to draw me in.  I knew in that moment that the inches of progress I spent trying to forget her had completely gone for good after seeing her.

Basic conversation followed, but really, all I did was get her number so we might “talk”.

What she told me about half an hour ago was primarily what lead me to where I am now.  It was also in part due to the mild sleeping tablets I swallowed - one and a half packets which seem to have no effect other than wanting to be thrown up.  Believe it or not, the tablets aren’t really why I’m sick.

To get to the point, she told me she was sorry she stopped being there for me, but she was afraid of all the things I was afraid of, too.  Of life becoming something only one person can offer you.  Of obsession taking over.  Of being hurt by someone you really wished more than anything cared for you in return.

Of all the things I had turned into, really.

She told me she had been seeing someone.

The smell of vomit really does induce more vomit.  I see fleeting images of all the televised throwing up scenes of every television show and movie I’ve seen.

She told me it was nice in a way your parents had a nice relationship.  Security over intensity.

I can feel that convulsion in my throat again.

Nothing special, she said.  Seeing the occasional movie together, spending time with each other, working jobs to pay bills.  Regulation sex because it’s what couples do.

My teeth jar the bowl as I feel the bile in the back of my throat gives rise to blood.  This usually happens when you swallow more than half a pack of any medication, even over the counter stuff.  The creamy contents of my stomach becomes a stomach-curdling red/yellow mixture.

She told me, it was the intensity she missed most of all.  The complete feeling.  Knowing you’re part of someone else in a way that’s inseparable.  Apparently so, anyway.

I spit out the taste in my mouth, since I don’t want to swallow it again.

She told me, whenever he touched her, she thought of me.  Whenever he kissed her, she dreamed it was me again.  The intensity was so sacred to her.

I think I loosened a tooth when I jarred my jaw.

She told me, she couldn’t go back to how we were, since it would only hurt me.  Security is important too, I guess.  She told me to remember that whomever she was with, she thought of me.  When they touched, kissed, talked, laughed, there was always a dream for her under it.  When they made love, when he was inside of her, she was a million miles away dreaming of what was.

It comes again, and I know my stomach has got to be near empty now, since it’s nearly all blood.  My neck is resting of the rim of the bowl, my hands loosening their grip, soaked in icky fluids of what should be inside of me.  I can’t breathe properly like this, with my neck hard on the bowl and little airflow getting to me, but that’s alright.  This is how I pass out, a million miles away, dreaming of what was.  I wonder who will find me like this, and whether I’ll be alive or not.  If I am, I hope they don’t find me for a thousand years, so that everyone I know will be dead, and no one can hurt me anymore.