melancholia

There are things I still remember from my past life.

My goose-neck kettle. The way the afternoon light reflected through the blinds. How my little laundry room was tucked into my kitchen. How melancholia drifted into the air as night fell and I’d uncork a bottle of Pinot Noir.

I would wander from room to room, a glass in my hand, sometimes poring over the contents of my closet, or the records in my valise, or the stacks of book as I reorganized them on my shelves.

With some ambivalence, I’d always decide what to make for dinner or how I’d spend my Saturday. I felt divorced from myself then and I drank to combat that dreadful loneliness, thinking it could assuage the vicissitudes of my outlook, or at least dull it for a while.

I remember feeling alien from the world, displaced. I’d stand outside with my cigarettes, staring out at the cobalt banks of the river as the moon rose and the air grew frigid.

It felt like I didn’t belong and I was only passing the time until chaos ensued. All I did was drink back then, I felt it was the only way to quell the cries of my breaking heart.

Late autumn evenings in Florida are something I’m still acclimating to. It’s not as if it’s unpleasant, if anything, the tropics where everything is always in bloom and where hibiscus blossoms always unfurl is quite an extraordinary thing to witness.

There is no excuse for me to drink, not that there ever was. But there’s still that melancholia, inescapable and inevitable.