A fresh start, and the night before

october 30, 2001 3:17am

My issues got the best of me last night. Mark had gone out so I spent
my evening lying around his apartment with a bottle of vodka and too
many cigarettes to count. I was alone. Both physically and
mentally.
Why had I even bothered to move to Georgia in the first place? I'm
eighteen years old... and there I was... lying on my absent boyfriend's
bed... pouring out vodka into an old glass that had once been used at
one of our parties when we were kids, and smoking these awful, awful
cancer sticks... just damaging my body... my self esteem... my
life.
I wrote down my thoughts, and slipped the paper into a envelope... it
was as if my intoxicated self just wanted to tell my sober self
something in the morning. I'm a different person when i've been
drinking... which is why it fucked my life up when I was thirteen...
and i'm waiting for it to fuck me up again. I just expect it... and I
give up... if it happens... it happens.
I addressed the envelope to myself... and carefully went back to lying
on the bed... still holding the envelope. I just needed help.
By 9pm, I had drunk three quarters of the bottle. I began to cry...
wondering why I was here... why did I ever leave my parents behind? Why
did I try to grow up so quickly? I cried for god knows how long...
nobody knows because they weren't there to witness my sadness. It's
probably best that way.

I eventually passed out on the bed... my letter to my sober self lying
beside me. My questions. My worries. My hopes. They were my only
friends... all sealed up in an envelope for my own inconvenience... now
my problems were quite literally in front of me... they were never
going away. I'd made them remain there... beside me.

Now I am here, and so are they.

---

october 31, 2001 10:08am

Another morning and yet again, i'm hungover and plagued with the stench
of cigarette smoke. I'm going to quit, I swear. I'll stop drinking...
because I only smoke when I drink and that'll just help me cut down on
the both with only half of the effort.
But at least I know why I came here in the first place.
I turned around in bed this morning and I saw Mark, still asleep... a
sweet little smile on his face. It made me want to grab a camera so I
could look at it and remember that precise moment... but then I thought
to myself and realised that the memory in my mind was worth much
more... a camera can catch a moment, but a mind can catch a whole
lifetime.

I flicked at his un-gelled hair... he always gets little swirly
patterns in his hair whenever he's just going to bed or he's too lazy
to put gel or wax in it.
I woke him up as I did this, and all of a sudden... it all came to me.
His eyes opened to reveal his beautiful sky blue irises. I have never
seen eyes that bright before... and they're two of the first things I
see in the morning, as I wake in my doubtful and hopeless train of
thought.

As I stared into his eyes, he smiled, revealing his perfect teeth. He
carefully kissed me on the end on my nose... and then grinned... like a
kid that had just got something he had yearned for. I didn't know what
he was so happy about... until I realised that it was me.

He was happy with me... and I was happy with him. That is why I came
here... because we make each other happy and we need each other. I can
give up drinking... smoking... anything for him...