(Source: artof-awms)

dopaminedatas:

Span of Delusion: 6 months

He proposed to me over a half-empty plastic bottle of Evan Williams. Tonight, his normal drunken slurs were repeatedly targeting a specific question. “Look, man I love you and I want you. You know? I would love to marry you. Get what I mean? Want to? Yeh man, we really should. Amanda, you are ‘Love’ incarnate. I want to fuckin’ marry you. Listen man, I love you…” Giggling from my recent spew of gin and tonics and drags from rolled spliff, I accepted.

The ring was a family heirloom, amethyst and diamonds. His mother was absolutely thrilled to present it to me. It had been hidden away in the back of a dusty tomb of a cardboard coffin. The band was rose-gold and a charming piece of jewelry, much more than expected from my bohemian fiance. After all, strumming on a guitar in your own home, didn’t quite pay any bills.

We were married on the rolling green acres behind his house. The ceremony was simple and the entire wedding party limited. At this point I had left home, and without my family’s blessing I had only a few friends in attendance.  None of that seemed to matter though as I looked through my vintage-lace veil and into the beautiful brown eyes of my new husband. Our love was strong, bound with purpose; we were revolutionaries joining forces and ready for absolutely anything.

-

Avoiding tradition, we eventually moved into a charming 1970’s volkswagen van. Traveling from bar to bar, city to city and earning just enough to feed our newly developed, yet completely rationalized, drug addictions. I had a variety of lovers and prostituted my talents and found personal comfort in cocaine. Now completely emaciated,  I was unrecognizable. Weeks later, I found his body cold and still gripping the neck of his guitar. I have always assumed that he either died from dabbing into my powder or mixing a fatal narcotic cocktail.

Years later in a California rehabilitation center, I unveiled my deep anger and resentment. I now scoffed at his simple tunes and pathetic hopes for success. He died at 27, like the greats, and was nothing more than a self-fufilled prophecy, but I loved him with my deepest love. And that; I could not forget.

(Source: artof-awms)

dopaminedatas:

Span of Delusion: 2 minutes

I was mostly attracted towards his deep, resonating gruff of a voice; almost a wheezed, bark. Yet that voice was comforting, wise and carried a strange familiarity. He was at least 40 years my senior and time had unkindly made this more than obvious. His dark thinned skin resembled a greasy leather and was freckled with strands of ancient gray hairs. Words spilled out of his cave mouth, lined with yellowed teeth and smelling of a horrible musk.

Physically, present day, nothing was attractive about this man. Only through a concentrating squint, could a younger man be seen, desperately trying to live again.

But he became much more than a dying old man to me. Our long talks transcended oceans of thought and galaxies of time. I learned humanity and kindness and learned his histories.

He had married his highschool sweetheart and had felt lost without her, ever since her passing 18 years ago. His children had grown up and moved away, their brief phone calls far and few in between. Isolation surely had advanced his aging faster than the cancer.

I later moved to Oregon and wrote every day. Then suddenly, the letters stopped. The dull ache of realization is slow to recognize but even slower still to surrender to.

(Source: artof-awms)