I Can’t Be Here Anymore.
It was just like every other day when it happened.
Larry had started working again; the money was flowing in. We’d go out drinking until 3 a.m., then get up and go to work again. Every day was the same, and weekends gave us a little time to sleep.
It was just another night in another bar, like every other night.
Like always, Larry was watching the band and I was staring around the room. As always, I compared the way everyone looked to the way I felt.
Everyone looked old and drunk, dancing and singing and acting ridiculously immature for their very advanced ages. At 21, I felt bone-crushingly lonely and out of place, like a bright red tulip in a field of weeds. It didn’t matter that I was in no way a bright red tulip. I thought I belonged in a better place.
I was watching some old women (at least 30) cackle in a corner; one of them kept putting her arm around some guy who obviously didn’t want her hanging on him.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said to Larry when the band was on break. “I can’t be here anymore.”
“Whattaya mean?” he asked. “You wanna go to a different bar?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t live here anymore. I can’t be here anymore.”
“I’ll get you another beer,” he said, knowing from experience that I easily might forget all of this in ten minutes. “Wait here.”
I can’t wait here, I thought. I don’t want to wait. I can’t be here.
Larry went to the bar, ordered us another round, and then talked to someone in the band. He was jovial and upbeat. I was sitting stone-still in my chair, staring emptily forward, dazed by my internal conflict.
I believed I might spontaneously combust.
Larry set my beer in front of me, took a long swig of his beer, then stubbed out his cigarette. Smiling, he said, “I’ll be right back, Baby!”
Then he climbed onto the stage and strapped on a guitar. Before I had a chance to say anything to him, Larry was starting to sing:
“If you had not fallen, I would not have found you, angel flying too close to the ground….“
Obviously Larry did not understand my angst. He thought this had something to do with him, that he could pacify me with a song, remind me that he loved me, that he’d protect me, and I’d be happy again.
But this had nothing to do with Larry.
It had to do with … everything.
I can’t be here anymore. This is all wrong.
Everything had been wrong for a very long time, but I was only seeing it now. I just wanted out.
I can’t be here.
“Love’s the greatest healer to be found….” Larry sang, smiling in my direction. But he’d become just a distant figure on a stage in the abstract world that was suddenly my life.
I can’t be here. This can’t be my life.
My head felt like it was going to explode.
“I’d rather see you up than see you down…” Larry sang. He didn’t understand me at all.
I. Can’t. Be. Here. Anymore.
“So leave me if you need to…” sang Larry. And that’s when it hit me.
I need to leave you, I thought. I need to leave right fucking now.
And with Larry still on stage smiling, playing his guitar, I got up and walked out of the bar.
And I kept walking in the dark for a long, long time.