Terms of Admission

“I’m sorry.”

Written on the protective paper peeled from a discarded pack of cigarettes.

A key tossed on top.

An embarrassingly small arrangement for the death of something so enormous.

The blood and guts of the message itself remain unwritten because there are some sentences language only cheapens.

I have closed the door. I know I cannot reopen it.

What am I sorry for?

Not for leaving. Not exactly.

Not for electing to treat crippling conditions with the most pragmatic pharmacological remedy available to me, simply to restore my most basic ambulatory abilities.

Not for inadvertently pushing his big red button, either. How can I avoid unknowingly discharging the landmine that was not marked on a map? There are simply too many places within him where an aimless step can set off a blast planted in the past.

I am sorry this is what became of us. I am sorry that what was restoring me became, in his eyes, indistinguishable from what had once destroyed him. I am sorry that no matter how clearly I drew the distinction, it no longer mattered to him. I am sorry I never found the final adjustment that would have made me safe to hold, that final form perfectly molded into a shape that could rest comfortably inside his hands.

I tried.

God, I tried.

By the final two days, he had so completely checked out that housekeeping had cleaned up and restored the vacancy sign before it had fully sunk in for me that I was already alone.

So much for his promise to tell me when something is wrong.

My ability to suspect a problem does not absolve you of your promise to state it.

I did my best to trust in him and believe in the promise instead of the evidence. I let the suspects go free even as they were apparently robbing the place, relying on the assurance that I would never again have to interrogate every change in behavior for what it might mean.

And even the most obvious suspect did not enter the lineup until the final fifteen minutes before he “fell” asleep.

By then, it was staring straight at where we stood behind the one-way mirror, pointing the murder weapon directly at us and winking.

I asked if that was the guy.

Still, no positive identification.

He shows me tattoo designs saved on his phone. Patchwork. Doodles surrounding numerous scribbles until a body becomes a publicized scrapbook of private mythology.

There, among them: come over when you’re sober.

Pointed out. Centerpiece.

I ask whether he means the words themselves or the entire arrangement.

Of course I ask.

There are questions we pose simply because dignity demands that the other person be party to their own confession.

His face speaks the truth before his lips have time to tell a lie. Still, they try.

No, no. All of it. Everything. Nothing specifically. Take your pick.

Uh-huh... I regret to inform myself that I have become forcibly fluent in dissimulation, unwillingly versed in passive aggression, involuntarily armed with a bullshit detector. AND ITS BEEPER IS BLARING.

Funny thing about transparency: it does not matter how clear the glass is when the person looking through it has already decided what is on the other side.

I have been crystal clear about substances.

Not merely admitted it.

Outlined it: Not regularly. Not for long stretches. Not some open-ended descent disguised as recreation. Short, deliberate deployment when I have already calculated the alternative and found it less survivable.

I could even show all the math: The micro-dosed amounts. The intervals. The reasons. The miserable little cost-benefit analysis of trying to keep a body functional when someone else’s aversions veto the logistics of every workable food option before my own hunger gets a vote, mornings arrive too hot and too bright to permit sleeping in while a loud-ass dog cries through whatever rest remains, and nights are surrendered to endless intimacy both physical and emotional until even the fumes I had been running on are burned through and exhausted.

I would be happy to talk him through every excruciating detail of this flight plan. There is just nowhere for the explanation to land.

He knows addicts.

Singular noun, really. Once the word applies, the person is mostly administrative debris.

His family taught him that. They disappeared into the designation one by one until every difference between them became irrelevant, every history reduced to the same category, every face merely another way for the word to wear skin.

Whatever came back was still technically them, but no longer seemed entitled to their names.

The lyrics of that sad song are, sadder still, almost the entire language available to him for substance use: the person leaves, an addict returns, and eventually nobody, least of all him, bothers distinguishing between the two.

So when I say intermittent, he hears inevitable. When I say deliberate, he hears denial. When I describe boundaries, he sees only the first few feet of a road whose ending he already knows by heart: a cliff waiting just beyond the next bend.

There is no space in his blueprint for tactical, surgical implementation. No framework capable of understanding how the same instrument that gutted his loved ones might appear in another hand and be wielded with precision instead of violence.

A blade, after all, can be a surgical instrument or a murder weapon.

A closed mind, though? That has no life-saving application, no matter how you slice it.

It does not excise. It does not repair. It does not rescue.

It only cuts deeply enough to kill.

Perhaps some verdicts stand, based on proof that burns itself so incontrovertibly into a person that any conflicting evidence discovered later is already charred.

I get that, which might be what hurts most.

But it leaves me in the peculiar position of presenting facts to someone who has already written the courtroom drama, accepts only what preserves the plot, and rejects anything that does not fit the narrative.

He has unilaterally appointed himself judge, jury, executioner, and -apparently- screenwriter... who has assigned me a role, supplied the motive, then cut anything that breaks character before it can make the final draft.

Every explanation is labeled revisionism. Anything said in my own defense is received not as testimony but as further proof that the defendant is behaving exactly as characterized.

The prosecution calls a witness who says: that is not what happened. Stricken.

The accused takes the stand and says: that is not why I did it. Prejudicial.

She moves to admit corroborative material. Immaterial.

The jury is not hung. The jury stopped listening before opening statements were over.

And perhaps that is the part I find most objectionable: I am not actually being asked to make my case. I am being compelled to appear in kangaroo court and recite lines neatly written to vindicate a pre-scripted indictment.

This is not a trial.

It is a foregone conclusion with blocking.

I can confess to the character or be held in contempt for going off-script, but I remain 'guilty!' regardless.

Meanwhile, he is high enough to resemble a child’s toy held aloft in the wind by string, chiefing a THC vape as if atmosphere itself has become an insufficient air supply.

But somehow I am the sole contaminant. I am the altered variable. I am what happened to the room.

So much for the goose and the gander.

So much for a sense of self.

I start to see myself through the lens of his silent scorn: Every pause becomes forensic data. Every distance incriminating. Every hesitation a filed charge I must disprove before I even know which crime has been alleged.

And slowly I freeze.

Not from the ice. From the massive fucking iceberg his cold shoulder has suddenly become.

There is a particular cruelty in being blamed for shivering while someone else keeps lowering the temperature.

I become more careful. Then quieter. Then less willing to move at all.

I try not to ask why.

That was the agreement, after all. I was not supposed to have to crawl through every possible explanation for a change in demeanor, so I resist the rabbit hole even as it opens beneath me.

But something is plainly wrong.

So if I will not diagnose the cause, I can at least try to make the conditions better.

What will encourage him to come back instead of pull further away? What can I tone down or turn up? What parts of myself can I tame, suppress, or sand smooth? What would make him comfortable again? What could return the genuine smile to his face? How can I invite him to touch me again with hands that do not recoil as if being laid on a leper? What can I repair without first being told what is broken?

There is no diagnostic code. No explanation of the defect. Only the mounting sense that somewhere inside his current state an inspection is underway, the clear indications that I am failing it, and the increasingly desperate hope that if I make enough adjustments to myself, eventually he will let me pass.

Meanwhile the frigid atmosphere is used as ammunition against me.

See? You are acting different.

Yes. Bodies tend to do that when they are dying of exposure.

The vicious cycle finishes exactly where cycles are wont to: nowhere.

Feeble pretense of a blissful boy fast asleep. No goodbye. Not even a fare thee well. My kiss proffered only to a cheek and even that apparently one trespass too many.

Fool me twice? Nah, the number is so fucking high now that I genuinely lost count years ago.

I have thrown myself against this wall so many times that eventually I mistook a few measly inches of give for softness.

Softness? Ha! The walls had simply become padded. And instead of seeing that for what it was (proof of my own goddamn insanity 🤪) I called that plushness 'progress!'

Turns out wall is a wall. Softness is only cloth over brick. Sometimes it gradually frays and wears through. Sometimes it rips right apart, torn open in your hands. The masonry waits underneath either way.

Now I have finally struck it often enough to knock something back into alignment.

Sanity by blunt force.

I shrugged off the straitjacket and walked away from this asylum carrying the bewildering clarity of a patient who has used up every last conceivable method of convincing herself confinement was care.

My mistake, I guess, for believing that full disclosure earned me something.

Not forgiveness. Not permission. Just the smallest benefit of the doubt.

Apparently even that is too much to ask when the trip sensitivity of the trigger in question has been filed down to a hair.

Shoot first. Ask questions never.

Context cannot outrun preconception. Attestation cannot reason with detonation.

Perhaps none of this matters. Perhaps none of it ever did.

Because after all this alleged headway, all the miles traversed and bridges crossed and little victories cheerfully catalogued, I have somehow reached my final destination only to find myself standing on the starting point.

Square one. 1️⃣ Irreconcilable differences. Incompatible machinery.

Two inventories of idiosyncrasies that can occasionally interlock beautifully and still grind each other into beautifully glittering metal dust when asked to run continuously…

…especially absent mutually permissible lubrication. 💅

Lord knows the “cunt” of the covered bridge has done all she can, given all she has.

I accepted his cargo. All of it.

Enough baggage to sink lesser ships, and still I kept clearing space in the hold.

No damage too deep. No history too horrifying. No eccentricity disqualifying.

Bring me your defects. Your contradictions. Your scars. Your maladaptive little mechanisms still coughing smoke from whatever fire forged them.

I will make room. I have always made room.

Arms spread wide enough to embrace every facet of your soul that still yearns for comfort. Lantern held high enough to help the uglier ones find their way in.

Let your lady liberate you.

Give me your tired. Your poor. Your wretched refuse. Your half-healed wounds, inexplicable habits, and all the weight that became unbearable simply because you had been carrying it alone for so long.

Come as you are. Yes, even if 9 times out of 10 that means: not at all.

You are safe here. Cherished. Seen.

And somehow no ugly part ever comes into focus. My eyes only register the loveliness produced by their collision: a beautiful disaster flying down the street again, somehow contained inside a whole-ass human body bag.

I could accommodate almost anything he brought aboard.

I only wanted him to remove the tinted glasses long enough to see that I came with cargo too, love me without demanding I throw it overboard first.

I positioned myself beside him as a judgment-free equal; instead, he placed me high above on a peremptory pedestal.

At first I mistook elevation for esteem.

Then the air got thin.

There was so little room to move up there. Barely enough to breathe. Every ordinary human imperfection made more conspicuous by the unflattering angle from below, every misstep suddenly carrying the dizzying threat of a much longer fall.

And eventually the height disparity began to feel less flattering than fraudulent.

He is allowed baggage. I am expected to levitate above mine.

He may arrive wounded. I must arrive sterile and prepared to administer aid.

His reactions are justifiably pardoned by mitigating circumstances. Mine are treated as signed confessions and sentenced to life imprisonment.

His crutches warrant accommodation. Mine apparently void the contract.

There is no denying it now: the object that he placed in my palm to tell me access was granted, that I was welcome inside, belongs exactly where I disposed of it.

On top of an abridged apology. Brand-new brass, already tarnished.

I opened my hand and dropped it there. Relief, not regret, flooded over me. More than ever, my conviction not to keep it felt right. So I left; the key stayed, whatever future it once unlocked did not.

Not because I stopped loving him. Or because his severance causes no pain. That would have been infinitely easier.

My love could survive every imbalance tilted in his favor, every inconvenience made mine to absorb, every irrational need treated as sacred because it belonged to him, every old terror still haunting him that claims to see fearful specters of danger in me, every insult to injury he carried through the door.

My willingness to keep walking through that door, on the other hand, could not survive being required to leave myself outside.