It still hurts.

How could I know something so small could affect me so big?
Stopping merely to get some gas, I've been driving for about a week with the gas light on.
I have to walk inside to pay, because I've only got cash left over from the farmer's market--
where we shop for fresh produce that normally we couldn't afford. We've been eating so much healthier,
nothing pre-processed. Fresh fresh fresh.

I step in line behind two people. One a girl maybe a little younger than me, old enough to buy alcohol, and she does.
She is buying a fifth of Captain Morgan, rum. Behind her, a guy, probably about the same age, maybe a little younger. He's buying two big fountain drinks. I can see they are not filled to capacity, there is still room left, to pour in the rum. He is old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes. He does. She is giddy. Giggly, happy about her purchase it seems. About the idea that soon they will consume and be consumed by intoxication. 

I step to the counter, say $10.03, and hand over my ten dollar bill and the three pennies I've fished from my console. I walk away. I'm thinking about the girl, and the boy. I'm thinking about the guys I saw on my drive to the gas station, sitting on their front porch, the yard in front of them littered with cups, one lights a cigarette and the other takes a swig of beer, it is 4:00 in the afternoon. I think about what alcohol used to be for me. The relationship we were in. How I loved myself more when it was inside me, how I loved others more and how everything felt so much better. I think about the crave I feel towards it, and about how if I did succumb to that crave it would drown the flower that is blooming in my heart. I think about those who can drink responsibly. I think about the artists that have made their fame with their relationship to this lover. I feel used up and confused. I feel sad, a mourning for the person I used to be-- cool like that, alcohol and drugs, coffee and cigarettes. And I can tell myself over and over, that this is the right path (in my heart I know it is), but it doesn't take the loss away. It doesn't take it away, I think, only time can do that. Time and patience and self love that I could never get from a bottle. It still hurts.

Comments

[Endrene]

Our egos want us to be out of control. The more drama they can produce, the more confusion and instability there is, the better our egos can take over our true selves, like malignant growths. Keep nurturing that tender flower, Maggie-Ann. The bloom will be organic, free of sythetics and toxins. It will invite butterflies of beauty and pollinators of dreams. Your heart and soul will flow with crystal clean rivers of joy. We all miss the toxic cities we grew up in. But the forests of our liberated souls... what wonderful places to be! Granted, we may still view the city through the branches with traces of longing. Naturally.