Pain and pleasure

They say pain and pleasure go hand in hand, but I don’t see the pleasure in my pain. Funny how small things turn into large monsters that threaten to devour us whole. Had someone told me that you would one day walk out on me I would probably have died of laughter there and then, for what we shared was way much stronger than those weak ass covalent bonds we learnt of in high school. But now as I stare into the empty void that you’ve left in your wake, the reality is just beginning to set in.

Remember that play we went to and towards the end the narrator paused for a moment and said, “All my life I’ve known war and battlefield cries, but now that the guns are silent, the silence is even more sickening”. Well, I’m at the point of sickening silence and no, not because of war, but love. The one bedroom house we used to call home now feels as wide as an airport without you in it. Funny how you kept pressing me to move into a bigger house and yet right now it feels as if new acres of space just cropped up. I have to admit that it is not always this lonely though, sometimes the walls close in and brings demons of the past who try to snuff out my life as a weird way of trying to show me that they care.

I found the bottles of wine that you didn’t carry along. I remember how we would sip the wine slowly while taking our meals and feel the warmth of it fill our bellies and think we were in heaven. But ever since you left, the wine lost it’s warmth and it also firmly replaced the meals. It doesn’t matter how many bottles of it that I drown now for every time I do, the warmth never comes and so I chose to drown my sorrows with the big boys. Jameson said hi by the way and I think Johnny has already walked halfway to Tennessee as I write this.

Most of our friends already walked out on me just as you did. For most of the girls, I understood, because no matter how wrong someone is, you always stand by the pack and guard it to the very end. Our male friends though, I really don’t dig what’s up with them. At first they laughed it off when I told them you had left. It was only when I didn’t laugh with them that they realised the gravity of the matter. Some of them looked at me in distaste and did not even try to hide how they felt for my allowing of you to slip out, maybe if I had paid a little attention the story would have been different, that’s what they all said. The few who stood by me left when I didn’t introduce them to my new friends Jameson and the forty percenters.

The people who seemed most hard hit by your departure was my family. My mom still doesn’t understand why you left. My sister, well she was your friend, went berserk and called me all manner of demeaning names and said she was tired of me fucking up every good thing that came my way. My younger brother only saw the candy bags that he would be soon missing and he hit me with his water gun but now we cool. My dad, dear old pops, didn’t say a thing but he needed not to for it was written on his face how dissapointed he was with me. The only one who took your leaving positively was Rex, our dog, for now I could spend more time with him and take him for those long walks as I pondered on my stupid life choices.

I had promised myself not to ever contact you or try reach you through any means but something happened today that I thought you should know about. Today while at work, a man in his forties walked into my office with his bride to be. They seemed to be a happy couple and after asking them if they were sure that they wanted to go through with it, I presided over a short formal ceremony and joined them into legal matrimony. Now, I’m not one to get into other people’s private lives but when you left I had to see who you left me for. Forgive my snooping but when a man is dumped unceremoniously for another, he must take a step back, study the new man and try to find his faults. And mine was that I didn’t have enough money. I digress.

Back to the couple, I don’t know if this is fate; but I presided over the marriage of the man you left me for, and you are apparently head over heels in love with, today.