This Is What I Should I Have Posted On Friday

Tonight I’m invisible. I’m a modern day American ninja. I have my sunglasses on tight, I can see you, but you can’t see me. I have my iPod on, loud enough for me to hear the music and you. I’m running through a shuffle play right now, a mix of everything from Ice T to The Troggs, making me think, every second of every song. I have a book, but, I’m standing on the train and I can’t get to it. It would have only been more camouflage anyway.
You don’t see me and I don’t want you to. Tonight I’m a fraud, a liar and an empty shell waiting for the night to fill me up. Tonight I am myself, completely and totally. I belong to myself and I am a fraud. I accept that.
I’m on my way to an AA meeting. I’m a fraud there too. I use a false name because I don’t need or want their help and I want to be able to take off the persona when I walk out the door. I am a drug addict, but that’s no one’s business but my own. That addiction is honest.
I’m fascinated by the meetings, the sharing of deep feelings that feel sanitized because no one is truly ready to admit how bad they really are. Except the mental hospital chick and she is only a shadow in the crowd of people looking to find help for something they call a disease, but sit in a room and ask God for help with. God doesn’t cure cancer. God doesn’t cure AIDS. God doesn’t even cure the common cold, so why is this disease supposedly cured by God? It seems wrong and ironic at the same time. I’m trying to decide if AA is just another form of jailhouse religion, and why this meeting doesn’t have cookies.
The meeting is over and the more I stay away from these people, the more they approach me. It’s funny. I’m here with a friend who has to be here and they ignore him. So much for the ninja. Maybe he can teach me a trick or two.
My friend and I go to dinner and I have a glass of wine, it’s the first liquid to touch my mouth today except for the water used to brush my teeth and it tastes like kisses from a slightly pretentious rock star. The wine instead of Jack type. It’s a comfortable, relaxing dinner. I needed it. I had a bad fight today and I want to forget it. I want to forget that my life is full of emotionally broken people and that their words are weapons because they are all they have left. I took a few heavy blows in this fight and another part of myself died. Parts of me have been dying regularly these days and I wonder often how much is left before I become the shattered, psychotic, broken mirror that the former love of my life is. The man who tortured me more than anyone else, because I let him. I had to see the wreckage, because I know I’ll be there one day. I’ll be there. Not with him, but I will be him. I will be dead inside and won’t be able to pull up anything except venom and bile. He is my future, he is what I will grow up to be and it doesn’t scare me anymore. It really doesn’t bother me anymore either. I’ve always been curious as to who my soul mate was, and it doesn’t surprise me that it’s someone whose soul has died. It actually makes perfect sense. He’s a few years older than me and I figure when I’m his age I will be him.
We go to a bar after dinner. It’s the type of place that you go to like you go to work. It’s a routine, a habit you’re not fond of, but there you are. It’s a bar of hatred, pain, anger, frosted over with drunken smiles. “Aren’t we having fun?” They slur this while knifing someone in the back, or maybe ruining a friendship, or a marriage. Cruelty is the currency here. You better be ready with an insult or sarcastic crack if you’re going to play here. You can’t be weak. The weak aren’t eaten here, although it would be easier, they are paraded around with their weaknesses in neon. I’m not weak. Not here, never here. I know what has happened to others and I’m not going to be them. I’m just here. Sometimes I need to drink, sometimes, I want to see people, but mostly, I’m just here because it’s what I do.
I need to be pretty here tonight. I need to be a girl. I need to be weak. I can’t be and I know it. I have to ignore those who could give me solace, exactly because they would see it for the weakness it is. I need to swallow all of it, the betrayals of the last few weeks, the pain and shame of losing so much of what I believed in over a period of days. I have to swallow the isolation and devastation of having my hero dismiss me. I have to swallow the humiliation of the fight today. I have to be a fraud. I can’t need anyone, because that need would betray those who need me and would maybe put me on the path to being human. I want to go to someone, a very particular someone, wrap my arms around him and say “Let’s go for a walk around the block. Get some air.”. I don’t though, I can’t. To do that would knock down everything I’ve built up around me. He wouldn’t get it anyway. Who would?
Today I was a fraud, and I’m just waiting for the day when I grow up and become my future. Hold on to what you have of me now, because it’s running out fast. Soon, I’ll be the person you don’t talk to anymore because you know whatever I say will hurt you. I’ll be the person you all hate. But I’ll no longer be a fraud.