Buying my bullets one bottle at a time.

 

If I had a gun, I would use it on myself.

Something quick so I only have to feel the pain for an instant.

Then everything goes black.

I hate the idea of a knife or razor.

I don’t want to waste time watching the life ooze out of me.

Even pills don’t work for me because I fear waking up in the middle dying.

All I want is to stop feeling anything.

So I do it the hard way, the safe way, one beer bottle at a time, torturing myself in strip clubs where dancers make fund of me even as they take my tips, then ignore me when the tips run out.

Out of booze money, too, I stagger through the door to the street and wander the dark places of the world where ugly things always pop out at me with the flash of headlights.

I think: if a car is moving fast enough or if a truck is big enough, I might throw myself in front of it.

But I don’t..

It takes courage to be a coward.

If I don’t have guts enough to go home and face the wife and kids each night, I won’t have courage enough to kill myself either.

So I wander and think and grow sober again while I wait for it to become late enough for the family to be asleep when I get there.

I never meant to get married or have kids.

That stuff just happened.

I knew I was no brain at school and that I would never end up as a Donald Trump or Albert Einstein.

But I always hoped I would end up somebody, maybe get a sports scholarship somewhere or even a job as a college coach.

Now I work loading and unloading boxes on a conveyor belt, and sometimes I’m so stiff at the end of my shift I can barely climb into may care.

Even then, as I break my back to keep the conveyor line packed, I hoped I might find a better life someday.

But even that gets beaten out of you after a while, by the labor and by asshole bosses.

I guess maybe I’ve been told I’m worth shit for so long I started believing it myself.

Sure, I took it out on my wife, then my kids, but eventually, I had only myself – drinking and whoring, until I needed drink more than the whores.

I usually get home sober, but late enough for everybody to be asleep.

I don’t even look at my wife in the morning and go to work feeling even more like shit than before.

I’d kill myself if I could end it quick. But I’m scared. So I just keep on buying my bullets one bottle at a time, dying on the inside every day a little a time.

 


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