Clementine

I peeled the clementine with my thumb. I was peeling the orange skin back into the shape of a starfish. The fresh citrus slowly filled the room. Masking or replacing the smell of stale linen and a steady running radiator. The stuffiness of winter pressing at the window. It only took one day for the stagnance to invade my room. It only took one day to relapse. One night. One hour.

A drop of clementine juice drips down my hands onto my sheets. I’ve spent the day here. I pulled back my curtains at a dreary hour in the morning. The gray light did not betray the time. I’ll pull them back again soon on the early night. I stared at the street nearly all day. Snow turned to slush, then to rain and back to snow. It’s the little things I’ve had to notice today to keep me sane. I try not to see my feet twitching, my hands shaking. My heart is beating too fast. I try not to notice how long it takes anyone to reply. I remind myself I now have a different concept of time. I don’t work. I’m alone, more importantly, lonely. My biggest fear came true two-fold, and now I live it agonizing second by second.

Clementines taste nice this time of year. I’ve never had a clementine so sweet. In fact, I’ve never liked clementines so much that I thought about buying another one. But I have a box in the kitchen. A drop of blood falls onto my sheets, right on top of the clementine juice. I guess I have to leave. I check my phone too often. So much that I don’t even register the time anymore, it doesn’t even matter. I don’t care if it’s dark or light. I use the last bit of toilet paper on the roll to stuff my left nostril. My fingers probably smell like clementines, but all I can smell is dark, salty, iron-deficient blood.

I look dead. Haggard. Bags under my eyes. Messy hair. I smell like shit. I wish it could’ve been clementines. Instead, I smell like smoke and rum, like the seedy bar around the corner and the bodega across the street. My own clothes feel unfamiliar. My face disgusts me.

I moped around for most of the morning. Sat thinking about how I fucked up, feeling sorry for myself. I fucked up my sobriety, panicked, worried the hell out of my partner and maybe fucked up the relationship. I slipped up. I panicked. I texted. I didn’t respond. I was too vague. I was fucked up and ready to go. I was prepared not to be here. But I couldn’t back then, and I couldn’t now. Now I had more reasons to live. For the first time, I had someone who I thought I could count on- and I didn’t know how to respond. I abused the privilege of communication. I didn’t know how to ask for help when I needed it most.

So here I am. In this stale room. Looking at my phone, praying to anyone that my partner would answer me. Even if it’s to yell at me, to tell me I’m fucked. I just want to hear her voice at this point. My heartbeat is too fast, and my body feels cold. I’ve never felt this cold in my heart.

I can hear her. I can hear her in a crowded bar across the country. Raising her voice to ask me if I’m okay. I can’t answer. I’m going to throw up again. I realize then how fucked up it is that I don’t know how to ask for help. There she was, leaving her fun night to chase down her coked-up lover. There is no strength in my voice. I can’t tell her what I’ve done, but I feel like I’ll die if I can’t hear her voice. It doesn’t register to me that I’m a selfish idiot. I just cry. It feels like I don’t know where I am. It feels like in a second, I’m about to lose everything.

I should probably work out. I know moving my body will make me feel better. So I stay in bed- I want to wallow. Every five minutes, I let myself gasp for air as I sob—tissues at the ready. Finally, I make myself work out. I sweat in the spare room—the best of the 2010s blasting in my ears. I haven’t eaten, and there’s nothing left in my stomach. I want to throw up again, but I just breathe deep.

Cold shower. I can breathe finally. I zone out. I can hear her panicked voice; I can hear my silence; I can hear her withdrawing. The cold water brings me back, and I’m freezing. Naked, alone, and too scared to make a move. I eat mushy oatmeal for “breakfast”. It makes me want to cry. It reminds me of her. I have to remind myself it’s not over. I have to remind myself that nothing is over. My imagination runs wild. I tell myself she could never love someone like me. I try to focus on how cold my toes are instead. She’ll call me, right?

She called me later, Cold, but it was just concise. None of the warm demeanour she usually had over the phone. Fair enough. She cut back the anxiety I caused last night. I hurt her—my biggest fear.

Space. That feels appropriate. I need it too. I’m lost.

I wrote it out like a middle school speech. When we called later, I laid it out. Probably nothing she hasn’t heard me say before. Somehow it gets better. It gets better as we talk. Somehow it feels better. Somehow it feels like I only fucked up yesterday, not my life.

I feel alienated. I feel like a burden. I feel like everyone I tell and reach out to pulls their hands back to avoid getting them dirty. The help I need is too much. I can’t describe what made me do it. I can’t express the feeling and the pain. I can’t describe the guilt I feel. I can’t tell you whether that guilt was always there - or if it started with addiction. It’s so specific. Like a knife digging into my stomach. Like a weight resting on my throat. My heart feels like beating fists on the walls of a room it cannot escape. I look out the window. The sky is moving fast - isn’t it cool how fast the clouds move.

There’s a chart stuck to my closet door with green packing tape. I’m waiting for the last of the day to waste away so I can mark it with a tally. I eat a clementine as I look at the chart. Contemplating everything. I open the window and let the cool breeze hit my chest. I get up and strike a tally with a piece of clementine in my mouth. Here we go again.