She doesn’t pull away; she doesn’t run like I expected her to. She just sits here with me, watching me play with her hand. She doesn’t speak, she barely breathes and I can only wait to hear her blame me. To hear her say that she loved me and I wasn’t enough for her, and that when she saw me again she wanted me. To hear the truth of what our love does to her.

“I’ve…I’ve been messed up for a while. Ever since Canada, I couldn’t really sleep or eat after that I couldn’t do anything, I was paralysed. All I knew was the pain and the guilt that consumed me…I’ve done some stuff that I’m not proud of. There are days, week’s…chunks of my life since then that I don’t remember.” I would rather have her tell me that it’s my entire fault then to hear her say that she was the one to fuck everything up. “There are girls that I can’t remember…they just appeared in the morning, in your place. They were distractions from the life that I lead, they were the only way I could feel anything other than pain…it was like before everything, before I ever met you or Cherie…it was when I didn’t care. The only way I could feel anything then…the only way I could connect to what I thought love was like. And I just wanted to be that person again…I just wanted to stop feeling.”

It hurts to hear it, to see her with those girls, to see those days when she was so out of it that she didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know what I was expecting, I knew about her girls about the parties and I use to pretend that I didn’t care.

“When I was in New York all I could think of was home…of the Planet, everyone here and I wanted to come back. I was sick of the endless partying, of trying to forget because it never worked…no matter what I took or how much I drank I always saw you. Every dream that I dreamt you were in…well you or that rabbit from the trix commercials.” what the fuck? “When I woke up all I thought of was how you weren’t there, how I couldn’t phone Alice up and talk. Or sit on Bette’s back porch drinking a beer and telling her that I loved you…I lost my family again and I did it this time. They didn’t leave me…I left them and I hated myself for it…there was time in there when it was good. When it wasn’t as bad, when I didn’t need the drugs as much… I was living in San Francisco for about a year and one day this girl, she was seven. She came in and walked up to the counter and stared at me, just stared at me for the longest time. She didn’t sat anything not until her mom came in…I hadn’t seen her since I was nine. I didn’t believe it at first, but then she just did that thing. That thing that mom’s do and I had my family back.”