<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Him<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been many things over the course of my life, some good, and some bad. I\u2019ve said things I shouldn\u2019t have said. Told lies I shouldn\u2019t have told and pretended to be someone I wasn\u2019t when I was unsure of who I was. But there\u2019s one thing I could never be, and that was\u00a0him.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve tried, in various ways to be\u00a0him, to be better than\u00a0him, to run from\u00a0him. The truth is, I\u2019m a coward. So, I do as cowards do and hide within myself, but with help. For me, it\u2019s the bottle. But for others, it\u2019s the vein or the pipe or the pill. To each his own I suppose.<\/p>\n Today, as with most days, the smell of whiskey reaches my nose long before I raise the glass to my lips. The woody aroma, the mouth-coating warmth, and the familiar, deliberate kick. I know it won\u2019t be long before my lucid and rational thoughts become compromised and the burden of\u00a0him\u00a0retreats; even for the briefest moment of time.<\/p>\n Drinking is how I survive\u00a0him; transforming myself from average man to inebriated, stumbling, confused, semi-conscious arrangement of human flesh. I\u2019m aware of the paradox; seeking escape from the infiniteness of\u00a0him\u00a0by pouring my soul into the finite space of a whiskey bottle. And whether on purpose or through my flawed interpretation, the\u00a0idea of\u00a0him\u00a0has\u00a0made me feel something less than human. What made\u00a0him\u00a0so special? He could have been many things. In fact, he could have been anything. It was of little importance what he did; only that he did it better.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve given it considerable thought and have determined the flaws in my existence lay deep in my cerebellum, well-hidden within the sulci of my brain; a severed neuron; an under-developed section of gray matter; a slow growing tumor; or a fault in my genetic code.<\/p>\n The whiskey is not ideal. Not by any means. It\u2019s sloppy. Some days it leads me down a path of endless vomiting, and I curse\u00a0him. Some days I hemorrhage tissue from my esophagus, evident by the spattering of blood in the sink. Some days my insides corkscrew themselves into knots, and I pass out from the pain. I suffer; as I have always known I could never measure up to\u00a0him, and over time fell, helpless into the deep chasm of despair. My mind grows clumsy as the toxic substances; the metabolites of the whiskey; the ammonia, and the manganese reach toxic levels in my liver. I live this way; bloated, stumbling, ruddy-faced, and alone.\u00a0The memory of him, I believe,\u00a0fades\u00a0the slightest bit. I scream his name in the dark with a tongue thick as cotton. I sound as if were a boxer; that would have impressed\u00a0him, to become punch drunk one-to-many times by fist and not by the bottle.<\/p>\n I have come to the point in my life I\u2019ve forgotten almost everything I have known. Except for the idea of\u00a0him. And this, even though I have tried to forget, has never left me. <\/p>\n R. E Hengsterman<\/strong> is a Pushcart-nominated writer, film photographer and flawed human who deconstructs the human experience through images and words. He writes under the Carolina blue sky. You can see more of his work at www.\u00a0ReHengsterman.com<\/a>\u00a0and find him on Twitter at @rehengsterman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Him I\u2019ve been many things over the course of my life, some good, and some bad. I\u2019ve said things I shouldn\u2019t have said. Told lies I shouldn\u2019t have told and pretended to be someone I wasn\u2019t when I was unsure of who I was. But there\u2019s one thing I could never be, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15672,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15670\/revisions\/15672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMy relentless obsessing over\u00a0him\u00a0leads me to drink more and more; hoping to forget\u00a0him.\u00a0I have felt such a burden; of being part of\u00a0him, but in no capacity, resembling\u00a0him.<\/p>\n
\nI tip the bottle back, again and again, a good measure, a wasteful measure, spilling. A sliver of sunlight parts the darkness, and in the mirror, I see with perfect clarity, after all this time, that I am\u00a0him. That he is me and I will never be able to escape\u00a0him.<\/p>\n