My life with caffeine.

You see, it really is like a love affair. It’s not a the long lasting, comfortable consistency of a good marriage. Not even the torrid, endless hell of a bad marriage. It’s more like that girl you know, she lives in a different city, maybe one you visit for work from time to time, and when you get there, you binge. There’s no familiarity outside excess, you don’t know what she eats for lunch, but you probably know if she likes her eggs scrambled. You haven’t ever met her parents, you don’t think about her life at the office, or know what TV shows she watches. But you know her phone number in case you end up in that neck of the woods, and you know how to make the most of your time together.

I don’t have a girl in a different city, I don’t know what she eats for breakfast, but I do know that when I drink coffee, I usually end up with heart palpitations and a bad night of sleep. It’s a very different feeling than soda, something that makes me feel razor sharp and brittle, causes my bowels to rumble and hurry in their duties, makes my eyes stop twitching, and takes away some of the aches from my hands. It is delicious and bitter and I gulp it in anticipation of the heartburn and the release. In spite of the tossing and turning, against my aversion to hot drinks, even savoring the fake cream in it, I pound it away until I am full of it, feel as if it is literally filling my throat, if I tip over it will pour out of my mouth and onto the ground.

And then I’m done. Weeks go by, months, and I don’t drink a cup. Sometimes I’ll get one on a weekend, going out for breakfast, but that’s pretty rare. Sometimes I’ll drink a cup with my parents, but it’s not the same, it’s got sweetener in it and I rarely finish the cup. There’s something wrong about doing it with other people around, something that sours the intimacy I have with it. Something that threatens the brittle balance and is unafraid of the razor’s edge.

Something disgusting.