Breakup-There are moments when you just need to be drunk

I don't typically drink a lot. In fact, I occasionally go a month or longer without drinking anything, and I don't even do that on purpose. I normally don't find it all that appealing, and I prefer to be sober and have fun without alcohol.

That has altered somewhat during the past few weeks. It approaches silently. You crack open one little beer and turn on some depressing country music in a minute. Before you know it, it has become a nightly ritual. Soon, you look forward to it as you wait for midday to end so you can repeat the process.

To put this in perspective, I'm now inebriated and listening to Jimmy Buffett. Before this drunken time, I was unaware of how depressing his music is. While listening to it, I'm taken back to a time when I was a young child, wondering where Margaritaville was and why Jimmy was initially so dejected and inebriated.

But I see it now. There are moments when you just need to be drunk. To kill some brain cells and forget about the person who seems to be infecting your mind like a virus is all you want to do. Sometimes all you want to do is stop feeling like you're perched perilously on a precipice of anxiety and emotion.

And at that point, the drinking begins.

I'll admit it. To get over you, I'm getting drunk. Maybe the drinking will cease once I'm there. It's a phase I'm going through to get rid of the hope I have, the poisoned hope that wakes me up in the middle of the night to stare at moonbeams streaming through the blinds or to daydream when shopping, wondering what kind of coffee I would get you if you were still here.

It might be helpful. I'm not sure. For the time being, I'm only doing it to enjoy a few blissful minutes. There is a comedown, and occasionally I am the one who suffers. Maybe every form of drunkenness are all compensated for in the end, when you have to quit and the withdrawals start.

Perhaps I'm substituting beer, ale, and liquor for getting wasted on you. Maybe all I've ever done in my life is use drugs to get by, to numb the agony, and to stop feeling like everything around me is vanishing as time passes.

You must constantly be inebriated. There is no other way; that is all there is to it. You need to be continuously inebriated to avoid feeling the terrible weight of time, which breaks your spine and bends you to the ground.

However, what? Whatever you like: wine, poetry, or virtue. But be wasted.

"Ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking, and if occasionally, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, they will all respond, "It is time to be drunk! Be intoxicated, stay drunk all the time so we don't become the martyred slaves of time! As you please, on wine, poetry, or virtue."

Charles Baudelaire

Maybe I need to be intoxicated all the time. I was intoxicated by your love and by the sound of your voice, and now that you're gone, I must continue to be inebriated at any cost. Wine, poetry, and a myriad of other things all promise the pleasant taste of intoxication.

I'm currently sipping on my second margarita while staring longingly at a beer in my refrigerator that is just dying to be opened. No amount of alcohol can make me forget about you. Instead, they let my memories drift on a sea of exquisite sorrow, where you are forever gone but also painfully close by. In these memories, I see your figure enter the room and give me another kiss before my body dissolves into the ground.

When I'm inebriated, I can wander around the neighborhood and think of you as a dream—one that both haunts and pleasures me. I can cry and sing about how much I miss you, but I can't go back to being immobilized and feeling like life is no longer worth living.

I've switched from being wasted on love to getting wasted on beer. I have discovered a new medicine that, despite the fact that I can still see you crying at weddings, dulls the impression that I want to fulfill all of your desires and that those sobs of sadness and longing were solely for me.

As soon as the comedown sets in, I start crying once more since I was able to enjoy the notion that you were still alive during all that drinking. I hope you cry for me too, and I imagine you do. This is especially true in the early morning hours, when time seems to stand still and you feel as though you are right next to me.

I anticipate continuing to drink for a while. Then, somewhere out there, I'll discover a new drug - maybe poetry, maybe singing, maybe a new vista.