Sliding Sliding Sliding

I was sliding out of control.

It felt like I was in the middle of an avalanche there was a loud roar, and then I was lost in a cloud of white, careening madly down a hill that I could not see at breakneck speed.It is a school day but I don’t bother going to class.

I show up on campus long enough for Georgie to pick me up. He hands me a bag and says that my gift is inside. It is 40 ounces of malt liquor and a fifth of whiskey.

A couple of months ago a few sips would have made me sick, now it is just barely enough to numb the pain. In short order I am drunk, but I am not a happy drunk.I am rude, belligerent and alternate between extreme bouts of anger and sadness.

My mother is lost in her own world. She is so wrapped up in her grief that she has nothing to give to me and doesn’t even notice that I am hardly home.

During the time I am around she sits on the couch staring off into space or absentmindedly playing with her hair. The man she loved is dead and the boy she still has is trying to slowly kill himself. It is shithouse luck, but the family that was is barely functioning if at all.

Guilt permeates my periodic bouts of sobriety. I know that I should try to help her cope, try to help her get beyond this but I am too weak emotionally to take on her pain. I can barely hold myself together.

Georgie is a constant companion. He is the one person that seems to understand my pain, the only one who can help me stay numb.

My girl is supportive and trying to do everything that she can to help me but I don’t want to feel anything because the pain is unbearable. I just want to finish becoming the hollow man, empty and devoid of feeling.It has been a while since I could hold her and smile. It has been longer since I could tolerate being held. The comfort she tries to give is killing me.

I know this because Georgie has been schooling me in how to stuff my feelings back down into a place where they cannot hurt me.For a short while she allows me to use her body to assuage my pain but this can only go on for so long before she and I begin to fight. She craves intimacy. She needs to love me and to hear me say I love you back.

But I am too focused on the life lessons that Georgie is teaching me. I am too busy learning how to take what she has to offer and give nothing in return.

I don’t know if it is because my teachers feel badly for me or if it is due to something else, but the semester ends and somehow I pass all my classes. Summer is my favorite time of year. I love the freedom and the feeling of the hot sun on my back, but most of all I love having nothing to do but drink or kick around with Georgie.

Summer brings a new twist to my descent into the pit I was sliding into. I have learned to enjoy the sound my fist makes when it meets flesh. I like being hit and I like hitting people. When I fight I let my anger go and I feel nothing but black rage. I am bigger and stronger than most of the people I meet. I give as good as I get and often better. I am not quite a bully yet, but I am close.

It doesn’t take much for me to get into it and thus far I have been lucky not to be seriously hurt. But that doesn’t last long.

It is Saturday night and Georgie and I are just cruising around town. We stop at a burger stand to get some food and he decides that he doesn’t want to wait in line. He doesn’t care about the people that are there because he knows that most of them are in his words “stupid sheep” and they won’t do a thing.

Tonight he is wrong.Tonight we are introduced to the pain a broomstick handle can inflict. The four guys we cut in front of are not satisfied with just kicking our asses, they want to hurt us. Had it not been for the police we both might of ended up paralyzed or worse.

The next day she comes over to see how I am doing. When she sees my back she begins to cry. I cannot see it, but I know from the way that I feel that it looks bad.

For the next three hours she begs and pleads with me to stop hanging out with Georgie and to try and get my life in order again. She swears that it is not too late and that if I let her help me we can fix things.And for the first time in a long while her words carry weight with me.

I nod my head and agree to try.

Last night scared me and the fear is enough to motivate me. For a short while life will go back to some semblance of what it had been and for a short while I try to let myself feel because deep inside I know that if I let myself love her I can begin to heal.

In the end it doesn’t matter because I just am not strong enough. I can’t take the pain and more to the point, Georgie is too good and manipulating me. In time I am going to fall down again and he is going to be there to kick me back to the curb.