Catalyst

I wore a lot of white in the days after he lost his head. As if the blank, innocent color erased all the things he blamed me for, all the things I'm still unconvinced are not my fault. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, because only I was there- only I could see his eyes glazed over and foreign. Something was in him that he’d never met before. If he could have kept it at bay or saved me from it in any way, I believe he would have. Though laws of nature are stronger than human wishes. Wood sitting on the hearth, doused in oil, has no choice but to burn. My words, my actions, the colors I wore, had no say in the spreading of a raging fire.

I blame myself for what I could not see. One drink too many, every once in a while, became a charming occurrence. I took care of him. Cleaned up after whatever mess he left, held his hungover head in my lap as he’d swallow the Advil from my palm. A charming occurrence. His intensity is what held me there, suspended in the dual role of girlfriend and caretaker. He loved me fiercely and I let him. I was attracted to the ticking time bomb inside of him, maybe because from the outside it looked like drive, passion; a lust for life. Though on the inside waves were always breaking, thoughts churning profusely behind my back as I’d ask a million times over, “What’s on your mind?” “Nothing. Not too much goes on in here.” I always knew better than that. The aloof, unfocused way he’d carry his own weight into a bookstore. He’d flip through his “favorite” novels, but he wasn’t there. He was floating high up somewhere, the words he scanned with his eyes sounding, then falling away, sounding and falling away. Everything I let him see of me was a beautiful distraction from what would ultimately need to be faced, though could not until I stopped saying “It’s okay, don’t worry about it.” Many times I wouldn’t speak it, a surrender of my body would do the trick; my unguarded acceptance of what only he knew was a growing problem- cancer in the veins of a new and budding relationship. But anything can become familiar, anything can go ignored with the right potion of love and longing. With my hands, my mouth, my skin, I showed him this. A grave, and cowardly mistake. But, the only one I could have made. For his child-like demeanor, a cry for help in disguise, bound me. I must have fallen in love with him for reasons I now hate to admit.

He didn’t know what he was, how could he have known what he was capable of? He hid from himself for years, in declarations of false control. Two breakfasts, two showers a day, two beers after work- a rigid routine that if faltered, hell hath break through the fragile ground. I became an integral addition to this regimented lifestyle. One askew comment from my mouth, one gesture out of my ordinary, or the deep contemplative silence that plagues only my most confusing of times- let utter chaos ensue. My humanness could do nothing of the sort to protect him from what he needed to hide from. It instead became a catalyst for his inevitable unravelling, much in the same way that one shower a day would have grown into a monster, feasting on his brain from left to right. In the contained, tiny vacuum that only two people can create, two beers became four, then six, then eight- until swigs of vodka from a white frosted bottle were all that let him go. Maybe the color white brought his mind to promise of erasure, as it did mine.

Waking up hurts. The sun hits the eyes in a white, fiery blaze, and a dark sky void of stars has never looked more inviting. He clung to his dark skies like a castaway to a lifeboat. He looked up at me through a depth both unknown and uncannily familiar and wept for my divine guidance. There is no greater disservice than expecting someone to act as a savior. It is in that expectation they shall fail the greatest, a feat barely accessible to a God. My words, my actions, the colors I wore, had every say in the spreading of a raging fire. He looked to me to save him and how I’ve failed, oh how I’ve failed. Let us catalysts forgive those who cannot see our necessity, that in drowning them we’re also showing them the surface, teaching them to breathe in another way, through another time, all by themselves.