His tummy rumbled loudly. Paul belched, dropped his head on the table and hugged the vodka bottle closer to himself. A little hissing sound from behind indicated that he just released a silent fart.
He believed it would feel good, like it did years ago, when he would drink himself to stupor. It did not.
For a forty-two year old man, he began to cry. The tears streamed down his face in large drops, hot and fast. He sobbed, his heart aching from the depth of the pain of despair, rejection and loss.
Despair, because he had been sober for three good years. The following month would have made the fourth year of his teetotalism. But he failed and regressed back into a lifestyle that almost cost him his life once.
Rejection, because his fiancée, Anna, called off their engagement after declaring that she was in love with his best friend, Aaron. They kept it from him for two years. They were very much in love. Anna was his everything. She knew and understood him better than anyone. And he loved her with all his heart. It seemed he was not enough for her.
Loss, because she was his support, his AA sponsor and he trusted her. She knew his lapses and how much he had come to rely on her support to stay clean the past few years. She cheered him on to stay strong and not give in to the temptation to drink when life's challenges pushed him sometimes.
Now, Anna stopped loving him, believing in him and trusting him.
Paul felt so, so tired. He slowly drifted off to sleep, his heart heavy and aching, his sleep intermittently interrupted by hiccups.
In his subconscious, he somehow hopes he would not wake up again to face the pain.
What I see
I see a young man, dressed in a shirt, wearing glasses which means he must be a respectable person. He is drunk. The empty bottle beside him says it all.
What I feel
I feel his dejection from the way his head is laid on the table. Something must have driven him to take to the bottle.
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