Building a Wall Around Loneliness

I think she loved me. Only looking back on it now can I see it.

She was a lonely girl. Average height, big lips and crooked teeth. Her hair changed with the weather. She introduced me to the Violent Femmes and chocolate cigarettes. She had a fatal attraction to skinny boys, playboys, pretty, sassy, mean boys. She loved them all, but they only loved her between bedsheets. I met her when I was eighteen. She was friends with my friends and I saw her at parties. Back then she was chubbier, and was dependent on her pretty boyfriend. When he dumped her she fell apart and became sick, started puking and immediately lost all her weight. It was after that time I decided to become friends with her. I didn't like her at first. I found her shallow and normal, and I didn't like the way she acted around my boyfriend. When I started dating him, he was living in the garage below her apartment. He had just broken up with his previous girlfriend and was between homes. they were friends. She often called him. Her skin was so white, it was almost clear, except when she tried to tan when it would take on the color of pumpkin pie. when we became friends her hair was dyed black and short, about chin length. We would talk about our celebrity crushes- Shannyn Sossamon and Angelina Jolie. She was the first person I ever got drunk with. I drank vodka like it was water until I realized my ignorance too late and spen the rest of the night regretting it, puking onto my own shit, keeled over on the bathroom floor of the million-dollar house she was house sitting. Later, when we were alone, we drank Sparks in her car and walked around downtown. She was 21 before me and I loved it. We were friends in the shallow way that girls are friends. All hair and makeup and drama. Bonding over self-destruction and pop-punk. That was all it was. It couldn't have been more. I couldn't accept that our friendship was anything more than surface deep when two years later I discovered that her and my boyfriend had messed around a year prior. Thats just how things go sometimes. And its not always so bad, but it was for me. Back then it was. I think I could handle it now, but... I just thought he was everything. And the flirting and the secrets were brushed off with drunken forgiveness. She had wanted to tell me about it, and he never wanted me to know. Finally she called my best friend and told him. He told her if she didn't tell me, he would. Then, a month later she called me out of the blue.She wanted, no... she needed to talk to me. Right now. She wanted to meet me in person, which meant I would have to drive 30 minutes to meet her in Tacoma at midnight. He grabbed the phone from me and left the room. Eventually he came back and told me the story. then I called her back and demanded every detail, feeling I was owed the truth. She gave me everything i needed and I broke down. Hard at first, then repetitive and slow for the next four months. My mind, my obsessiveness began to drive me insane. I tried to escape from myself, scratching and clawing at my skin in the shower. The feeling is unbearable, wanting to escape from yourself. Not necessarily by dying, maybe by becoming numb or empty. The lack of feeling saves you from yourself. Stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Feeble attempts at suicide with too few pills, not enough alcohol, and loud music in a cold basement apartment.