You’re My High

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Last night was amazing and ohshitohshitohshit that is bad news bears for me. Because you’re the reason it was amazing. And that word is so inadequate. It was resplendent. It was effervescent. It was clothes right out of the dryer when it’s 20 below out. It was the guac doesn’t cost extra. It was… a high.

Yes. That’s what it was. I imagine it was like a line of cocaine. I’m not sure because the farthest I’ve ever gone down Avenue Illegal was drinking safely with people I trust before the age of 21. But I imagine that is what it feels like to itch for something. To yearn for it and then to feel the rush of it taking over every nerve-ending in your body until you tingle with life. Until you are just so… alive. Achingly, dizzyingly alive. That’s the only word for it. The stupid cliche of high on life.

But on you. High on you. High on what you do to me.

And I know iknowiknowiknow that we will never be. But here’s the thing. You are cocaine. And that new guy, the guy that’s nice to me, the guy that texts me back on time, the guy who gently teases me, and goes along with my jokes, the guy that sends me goodnight texts? He’s great. He’s more than I can dream of deserving. Because people don’t really deserve other people. That’s too close to control. Or ownership. But if I were to get to pick a person that matches up with what I should be allowed to get in this world, he’s right along those lines. Better, even.

But he’s like caffeine. A dull, normal, legal addiction that interferes with my daily life only if he’s not there. He’s not going to come in and kick my life in the metaphorical nuts and then expect my life to laugh along at the joke. (Why did I make my life a man? I don’t know.) He’s great. He keeps me awake. But he doesn’t keep me alive.

Not like you. You are the hit I need, as it turns out. Fuck does that terrify me. I think when I liked you, really like-liked you, I was delighted to have something that I needed. Something that lit my insides on fire. Now? Now I know I need to quit. I know I have to get my life in order and stop circling back to that stupid habit I have of needing you. Because you earnestly are cocaine-level bad for my mental health.

I never really got the cliche metaphor of drugs and love and addiction. But it’s so real. I didn’t feel like myself again until I saw you last night. Forget about spiders and heights and schizophrenic men on the subway. I fear you the most. I fear that fucking need.

featured image – Thomas Hawk