The Best And Worst Times

     After Max was better we started working and going to school like we had been, it was like nothing had happened except for he was taking more pills even though he said they all made his soul feel trapped. He said he only took them so that I didn't have to miss him, when he got sick and I wouldn't kiss him and he would complain a lot. "Come on E, jus one little kiss baby?" he would ask sleepily, I'd always give in and press a light kiss to the scarlet, normally pale, skin of his cheek. "Your kisses are my favorite meds, the only ones that actually make me feel alright," he would sigh and cuddle up to my side to fall asleep. Sometimes he would whisper song lyrics in his cigarette raspy voice when he thought I was sleeping, his cold fingers would trace over my inked skin and leave tingling warmth in their wake.

               I would trade anything to sleep normally again. We had been living together for five years when he died, I can't stop myself from asking why I didn't realize that he was dying until it was too late. Maybe I'm as self-absorbed as people tell me I am, maybe if I had met him sooner he would still be alive.

               I think the hospital he was in for a year killed his soul, he never liked it that there wasn't any other color aside from white. We didn't like that we couldn't tough or kiss. Do you ever feel so far away as if someone wasn't there, though they're only a few feet away? That's how I felt when Max was allowed to have me visit, we couldn't talk about new records I bought for when he got out or the new comics waiting for us to read them. He talked about his pills and how he hated taking them, how he loathed group therapy and there were people worse off than him there, how he craven a cigarette and missed the stars. I told him about working by myself and how me and our puppy couldn't wait for him to come back home.

                 Max changed after that hospital, his eyes weren't clear anymore, now clouded like the sky before a storm. Whenever I asked him if he was okay he would smirk at me and roll his clouded eyes, "Baby, I don't plan on magically being fixed. You don't need to worry about me, because I'm not thinking about living a day without you." There were some days that he would wake me up with breakfast and lazy kisses, he'd be so full of adoration; then there were bad days. On bad days I would coax him out of bed with coffee and force him into a shower and clean clothes, then I'd let him lay his head in my lap and get the tangles out of his hair while he slept and watch whatever cooking show or movie he had put on before falling asleep. When he had a few bad days in a row he would cry on the phone with his psychologist and beg her not to send him back to the horrible hospital.

                 We liked to go camping when we didn't have to work or go to classes; Max would fill the trunk of our beat up Buick with a tent and blankets and snacks and glow sticks. Then we would drive a few counties over to hike up to our favorite camping spot and set a fire to give us some light while we fussed with the tent we had only put up ten thousand times, but some how still didn't know how to set up without struggling. The fire would be burned to thin air by time we had finally settled.