It Takes Its Toll

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York

Life. It exacts its toll. It wants its fee. Nothing is for free. It literally sucks the life out of you, that's its job. What are we to do. I used to want to Rage Against The Machine. Then I burned out on the anger. The anger started to destroy me. I tried Peace Love and Understanding, but that was just annoying. Somewhere in the middle perhaps lies the truth. Then, Love. Love as Truth. Love, I wanna say is an illusion. But I don't think that's entirely true. But Love is illusive. What the fuck does it mean to Love someone anyhow? Does it mean that you accept someone just as they are? That would be an illusion. If you truly Love someone, you tell them the truth. And sometimes the truth is ugly, like baby: sometimes you drink too much, and when you do you go to a place that hurts me to see. I don't like to see you in that state as it makes me feel as though you don't appreciate yourself, and that makes me sad, because if you saw yourself the way I saw you, then you wouldn't feel the need to destroy something as beautiful as you. Or, baby: when you're in that state and you're playin' your music loud cuz you wanna drown out the world and you wanna keep it on til 4 in the mornin' when you know I've got to get up at 7, that just feels disrespectful. And when you start responding to emails from that guy who's married to your friend who you kissed just after I met you, who came calling drunkenly at your door like a fucking Tom cat at five in the morning looking for pussy (just after we'd split up when I went to Utah) not knowing that I was back in town (you giving me the phone to let him know to go the fuck home), giving him feedback on his writing (just like you do with me baby - I thought you did that just for me boo?), don't you realize that it hurts me and only makes you seem cheap. And I go around for a week after that working 67.5 fucking horrible hrs. with no one to talk to about this stuff, lifting heavy steel, driving around Manhattan in a giant fucking truck through rush hour after hour of endless traffic, flipping people off, with a knot in my stomach wanting to throw up because I don't quite know how to process it all. And God knows that I can't talk to you about it because it will just turn into an argument. All the while trying to figure it out, and make it seem rational, but, the problem is, is that it's not. None of this is rational. And when I finally decide that I want to try to talk to you about how it makes me feel when you're in that state (leaving out of the equation, out of respect for decorum of course, the whole part about that fucking overly literary little creepy fucking jerk with the panzy ass fucking outdated prose, who's out chasing pussy while his woman's at home with the little one) you turn it on me. And instead of trying to take it in that I'm actually offering you some sort of olive branch of hope for the both of us, you get all defensive and tell me that I have a fucking perception problem about your drinking. Well then, I think we've got some serious fucking problems, coming not to fucking long after I felt like we'd cleared the air about our perception problem with that fucking Jamaican motherfucker kissing you Upstate. So it seems like I've held my tongue long enough on this one. It sounds like I have a problem. And I guess that's why out of the blue, last night I told you that I'm through. And that's why I'm movin' out... because I'm tired of holding it in, because I'm tired of going to my fucking therapist's office each week feeling sick to my fucking stomach about something that you've said or done that I can't figure out (my perception problem, right?), feeling like there's something wrong with me because I can't quite accept whatever the fuck is going on. And each week the therapist tells me the same thing - that my feelings are valid, and that I should respect them, and that you just might have a drinking problem (and that if you indeed do, then there's really no way that we can deal with our issues, until you deal with yours). I'm sorry if that hurts boo, because I love, I really do, but it's the truth.

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