20. Vortex

20. Vortex

You're there, you're beautiful in that dress, you smile, and it's all I can do to remember that you're no longer smiling at me because idiot idiot idiot I was so used to smiling back that it sort of hurts to stop myself from doing so.

Your eyes don't light up for me any more shit why am I even thinking this I need another drink I'm not the person whose body will be curled around yours tonight and that hurts because for a while I thought that I would be with you forever but I was delusional hopeful stupid imagining things.

I don't want to know anything any more.

I try to lose myself in the vortex of smoke and vodka and adrenalin and bright colourful changing lights while you stay with him and stroke his shoulders and kiss and whisper and there is that shy beautiful oh so familiar smile and I'm over here, letting my heart's bandages unravel to reveal the cuts and open wounds and the fingerprints you left.

There are other girls, with shorts skirts and low cut tops, who swish their hair and touch my arm and smile, whirling around and around at the same speed I am, but their eyes are closed and they don't feel what I do when he holds your hands and tugs you out of the room, away from the party I hate you I hate him how could I ever hate you. My heart breaks a little bit more, but I won't feel it until the morning because someone has pushed another plastic cup into my hand and the drink is red burning strong making me forget how much I loved you.

My phone beeps and it's my sister, she's worried, but I don't care. I draft a text message I love you I miss you can we talk smiley face xxx but I delete it before I can think about sending it to you and watching your reaction from this side of the room.

So I drink more and more, until all I can see in the whirlpool are the colours in the cigarette smoke and the flashes that reflect of the shiny plastic cup and I can hear the giggles and the music and the beat pumps through me so hard boom boom boom that it replaces my heartbeat as someone as drunk as me dances with me and kisses me and I need to forget about you. I drink until there are no people or music or lights, until I can't think any more, until laughter bubbles up inside my chest and I let it go and I laugh and laugh and laugh and I drink and drink and drink.

Black.

Then I wake up. It's too early in the morning no matter what time it is and the sun is white too bright blinding in my eyes and my head pounds and my mouth is dry and tastes like something nasty died in it. And all around is the stale smell of sweat and perfume and residual heat and all I can see are the remains of the alcohol and drugs and clothes that people forgot in their hurry to leave and do the walk of shame.

I hate it. I hate waking up in a bed on the floor in the bathtub somewhere I don't recognise and I'm ashamed of how I act, but I don't know what else to do.

You're gone.

And there's nothing I can do to make things better, so I go out to find something anything please let there be something whatever it is that can help me. I let myself fall into the vortex, which will comfort me with kisses and words and body heat and it's only the next best thing because I'm still missing you despite what I try to convince myself of.

So I do it all again. The cigarette smoke and the heat rising from the dance floor and the drink and the laughter and lights.

Because if the vortex stops, if I step out of the security that the daily colour drink black routine offers, I'll have to think about why.

And the more I think through the same thoughts that have gone around my mind since Tuesday night eight p.m. when you left me it happened, the less I know how to answer them.

Every morning, when I wake up, they circle through, quickly, before I can stop them why did you leave me did I really love you or was I in love with the idea I had of you was it because of him before I can purge myself of them.

Every morning I hate myself slightly more because I know what this is doing to me, but I can't stop.

I'm so sick of being so stupid.

Maybe one day I'll wake up properly and be able to think without you and your smile crowding my brain.

Maybe I'll realise that you can't find hope for tomorrows in what's left of last week's alcohol.