If you don't know me by now.

“All the things that we've been through
You should understand me like I understand you
Now girl I know the difference between right and wrong
I ain't gonna do nothing to break up our happy home
Oh don't get so excited when I come home a little late at night
Cause we only act like children when we argue fuss and fight”

June 2003. The summer of heartbreak and the winter of emotional discontent. I remember that year you tried so, so, so hard to keep me straight and narrow. You ever see that movie “North by Northwest” where Cary Grant's character is being chased by that plane out in the middle of fucking nowhere? Well, that's where I was, minus the plane and Cary Grant. No, I was Cary Grant; there I was running with all of my breath, shitting my pants, trying to outrun the tumbleweeds and the vultures and the devil, following the rose petal scent of rot and decay. Depression laced with addiction laced with despondency; translated in layman terms, I was dead. Every morning I'd get up at around 2 pm, swallow 4 ephedra pills, 2 aspirin, snort 2 lines of Coke, and wash all of this down with a cup of cold coffee I just happened to brew the night before at around 4 when I stumbled in still tripping on E while you lay asleep in bed waiting for me. I used to tell you I stayed out late because I was seeing friends in from out of town. After about the second week (10 days minus the weekends) you stopped believing me. Shit, I'm sure after the second day you stopped believing me but were too nice to actually say anything. You wanted to save me. To save me? You might as well have sealed me in formaldehyde and placed me on the shelf with the rest of your failed experiments. “You cannot save he whom does not want to be saved” I'd tell you every day as though the phrase was going out of style. As though I had invented it.

"Selfish" isn't the best word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

“We've all got our own funny moods
I've got mine, woman, you've got yours too
Just trust in me like I trust in you
As long as we've been together it should be so easy to do
Just get yourself together or we might as well say goodbye
What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye?”

J___, do you remember that last night you and I fought? Yeah, that was the same night I accused you of cheating on me and spit on you. We were at the club, me with my friends and you with yours, celebrating your birthday, of all things. Amped up on tequila and anabolic steroids, I happened to see you on the dance floor talking to some dude. My brown eyes turned green and then red and then black, as I pushed through the crowd and grabbed you by your hand, shoving the other dude into the waiting pack of my homeboys who were ready and rearing to attack. You told me he was just a friend from way back... and no, you two never fucked. You started to cry as you just couldn't get it through my thick skull I was throwing away something true...something good. You started to cry because you were hurt and dismayed at my unrelenting selfishness. You started to cry because you invested so much into this wretched, wretched “relationship” only to get nothing back in return from me. I disagreed: I pointed out to you, in slurred backward speak, that you were with me, which is in itself, a gift. You laughed at my absurdity; and our backwards, fucked up, strange love which defied conventional logic, driven by Ex and sex. The law of cause and effect was not applicable to us...or the effect was an undesired one. The effect was this: me, a drugged out piece of shit loser/abuser. The cause could have been any number of things. I secretly wanted to fuck my mom; I missed my ex; I was a dismally unambitious failure; I suffered from seasonal disorder; multiple personality disorder; post-traumatic stress disorder; acid reflux; erectile dysfunction; gingivitis. You see I always had an excuse for everything. I always had to place the blame on everyone else, anyone but myself. You finally walked the fuck away from me that night. You couldn't stand living with me anymore. I don't blame you, neither could I.