Probably a bad idea.

Two years now. She asked me to set my alarm so I could make sure she made it to work on time at 5am. Her and my roommate continued to hang out in the living room as I went to bed. Just a week before she was over again. My roommate had his new camera out filming us doing stupid things. He pointed the camera at me as I was looking over at her, her back turned to me. I said to the camera, “I cant help it, I love that girl.” We had dated and broken up twice now over the preceding couple years. It seemed, to me anyway, that it was just about that season for round three. I had deep reservations about the idea, but she was what I knew and no one else seemed interested. At four I got up to wake her. I found the two of them under a blanket on my couch. Clothes on the floor. Even immersed in that scene I was too naive to really believe that this could be happening. I remember asking her if she kissed him. Kissed him. God, I'm an idiot. Really, Eric, people do these things and they do not think of you when they do them. I sat right there in the living room as she dressed and left. He tried to hobble together the first in a series of incoherent explanations all of which left the blame safely out of his jurisdiction. I sat quietly smoking. The house suddenly was lit up and shaking around him. I listened. He began to rifle on about how he could do something like this to me. He asked me if I thought he should move out. After a long moment of thought I said that he should. Again I sat quietly on my chair next to the couch as he began to pull out his mattress, then his box spring into the kitchen. 5am now. He stopped and came over to me and calmly asked me why it is that I think he should move out. I answered that I cannot trust him anymore.
He grabbed his coat and left. Everything stopped. I continued to sit and stare at his bed, now piled up against the refrigerator we had decorated earlier in the year with spray paint, glue and a blow torch. It was a good house. Conducive to both creativity and social gatherings. We had our things which annoyed each other but overall it was good. Until this morning, two years ago. He left in a huff. He was so drunk but continued to text me as he drove. He started talking like he was going to kill himself. I actually started to worry about him. We talked and I calmed him down. He came back and I could not fall asleep until I heard him come into the house.

I went to work in the morning and he was passed out on that couch. Later that day he tried to say that this all happened because he was an alcoholic and I, I should have seen that earlier. Then it was that her and him have known each other longer than I had known her, they were old friends and this kind of thing happens between them occasionally. This keeps getting better and better for me. To this day I am not sure if it really is the worst thing anyone has done to me or if it is just that there are distinct lines of blame. The victim, me, is clearly defined. All I did was get out of bed. Its the kind of chiaroscuro not usually visible in the single pantone swatch that is ordinary life. I do not know if I was really upset or wanted be really upset.

Things calmed down. I kept my distance. He was my best friend and it was no longer. Soon we were hanging out again. Going for drinks in the neighborhood we talked about anything but. At this time I as trying to open my own business. That failed. I wanted out of the job that I had, as much as I loved it I needed to make a little more money. So I started working in a warehouse. Selecting orders at the Whole Foods Distribution Center that delivered most of the food to all 29 stores in the midwest, I sometimes worked 13 hours a day, no less than 10 hours, 5 days a week. I was never home and that was fine. I literally worked my ass off. I lost a lot of weight. Normally come home, drink a bunch of vodka and pass out around 4am. One night he came home as I was drunk in my room on the computer. He came in, uninvited as usual. The subject of my art and music was on his mind and he launched into a two hour, relentless diatribe on how every single piece of work I have ever done was the most untalented, unintelligent and uninspired piece of shit he has ever seen. Citing example and opinions of my friends. He bashed things I had not even started or finished yet. Cutting down with x-acto like precision on everything I had poured my heart into. Likening all of my paintings as unfit to cover holes in the wall and all of my music(none of which he had EVER heard) was bland and trite. This was my best friend. To say I was hurt is to say the least. He nailed it. He hit my insecurities with such laser guided force it was as if he knew me better than anyone, saw what I was and chose to destroy me. In the years since the only logic I can lay upon it is some kind of lame Tyler Durden style resurrection through destruction. He thought there may be more, something better inside me that could not come out with my current brain. So he decided to infect it with his sociopathic wisdom. I was done. Completely wiped out. One afternoon I put all my things in storage and moved back to my parents with a suitcase and an inflatable mattress that I spent the next year sleeping on. I did not even remind anyone about my birthday and let 29 slip by without celebration. A few weeks later I lived in Alabama. With nothing but all the time in the world to think about it.

It has been two years and only now have I felt comfortable to start making music of my own and art of my own again. But still everything I make goes under his scrutiny in my mind. Constantly am I torn between making making interesting fun things and work with gravitas. Something possibly bigger than myself, drawn from places I cannot normally see. These are things I wish to make but fail to realize.

It was not until my last trip north that I got an apology I believed. I am a better man for it. I still speak to her occasionally. I have found the capability to forgive. Even now I hesitate writing about it. It does not feel like me. Or something that happened to me. This is someone else's history I recall. I feel detached from it. Despite the craziness I cherish my life in Arkansas. This story is what brought me here, the people of Little Rock are what kept me.

You two, I love you but I don't miss you.