You think you’ve found a way to make self-destruction a social activity. You pick him up. He’s cute and he talks too much and you take him home because he’s nice enough. He ***** like he talks--too much, too fast, leaping ahead of where you’re really at. Which is on a mattress. On the floor. In your parents’ house. In a room that used to be your nursery.

You’ve learned to hate yourself enough to not even be hurt that he stops texting you the next day. You’ve finally understood the nature of these transactions.

You don’t even know his name. He drives forty minutes to ******* and he pushes you down the way you’ve always wanted and he smells nice and he kisses like he wants to be kissing you. You know by now that doesn’t actually mean he wants to be kissing you.

He’s got big, strong arms you can dig your fingers in and the mattress creaks with every strain of his knees and you think maybe it’s not that important to know his name.

This guy has a nice bean bag chair, but it hurts a little when he ***** you and you realize no matter how many times you do this, you don’t hate yourself less. You hate yourself more.

You can **** your way through the greater St. Louis area and convince people that you’re happier for it, but you’re a liar. You’ve always been a liar. An unreliable narrator when it suited you and when it didn’t.

Self-destruction is self-destruction whether you use another person to do it or not.

And it’s not the difference between being lonely and being alone. It’s ensuring that you will be both.