I drank four bottles of beer at home by myself and I found my best friend's boyfriend's house and they were both drinking vodka so I joined in and it was nice, just the three of us 'cause I don't much care for anybody else these days. I got really drunk and I didn't fight it or argue it or try to change it. I drank and I drank and we talked about anxiety attacks and depression and counsellors and eating disorders and then just being happy and I was honestly and truthfully able to say for the first time in a very long time that I love my brother and would do most of anything for him, but that he is judgmental and sore at the world and this leads him to being a complete and utter fool sometimes. He is lacks empathy and the ability to form positive opinions in negative situations and this is where I must fault him most. He did not visit me once in the hospital when I almost died and for that, I have neither the strength nor the will to forgive him. Call me weak, but that stung. It stings. But anyhow, I mustn't dwell on it because it will ruin a lot of other things that are in fact pristine right now. You know, none of my good friends talk much to each other anymore. I am the glue and I will forever remain the glue because I am either too weak or too strong to give in. Things have been petty, we are like children on occasion and I find myself biting my tongue and holding back on my thoughts because I don't want to be seen as somebody who would choose favourites. But I am only human and I'm finding it difficult to get past this because the people I love most in the world refuse to see the good in each other anymore. So really, I went and saw my best friend while others stayed home or did their own thing, and I was supposed to wander into town to see another very good friend, but I found it much too difficult to leave when Brendan's brother came home and turned off the metal in the background while I went to the bathroom, and when I came back he was singing along quietly to Paolo Nutini. It made things feel real for me, and I don't know why or how to explain it, but it was quiet and I was drunk and there was a boy that I'd never thought to talk to before singing one of my favourite songs. We sang and we danced and we laughed, the four of us, and we were all having a ridiculously good time and it made me wonder why anybody would ever want things to be any other way. But I had made a promise, and so, I left and I fell in the door of a pub, a door that they locked five minutes later and I found my other friend wearing a white dress with straight hair and she looked almost angelic and I kept looking through her because I didn't or couldn't recognise her multiple times. She bought me a lot more drink and I let her, I don't know why, but we laughed and she kept kissing me and I let her do that too because I was in love with everybody and everything. I met a boy that I had been in love with for a long time. Not the romantic kind of love, but the deep kind of respect that you get for your closest of friends, and he hugged me and it felt surreal and wrong and he asked me did I still have something that he gave to me a few years ago, and I told him that I did, because I do, and that I don't know what to do with it. I guess that made him sad because he left me just then, and I never got to apologise about giving up on him and giving up on us and how things turned weird and sour because of how I handled a situation that wasn't really happening. I didn't stay there too long because my knees were buckling. I left with a heavy feeling in my chest, glad for my brother to be there to drive me home, and instead of telling him that he hurt me that one time all those years ago, I kept beeping his horn every time we passed people and he was laughing but telling me to stop, his face contorted into that wry smile that only he can do and so I asked him to take me to the capital. I'm not sure what reason I gave, but I wanted him to take me there so badly just then to see another man that I care for deeply and it felt like the only thing to do in the whole world that could make me feel anything good again would be to lie in his bed with him and talk 'til the sun came up and then some, but it never happened because the capital is over ninety miles away and the roads weren't safe. So this man, he called me in the end on the phone, and he was drunk too but I hardly even noticed because I was drunk enough to try to sit on my bed but to miss it and land on the floor and not remember it. I told him a lot of things just short of telling him that I love him, and I felt good about things in the end.
My mind plagues me in an unusual way, and I dislike being so easily influenced and so empathetic and hurt. I am thick skinned to the untrained eye, but I am tired and I am weary with trying to go on carrying my little burdens.
I am in love with the world, and in turn, the world pains me. It's a small price to pay.