Since our wedding day, we lived in a blissful dream world. I ignored the quiet tap at our bedroom window at two in the morning. I ignored the rustle in the sheets as she rose from our bed and slipped into her nightgown. I ignored the opening and ever so gentle squeak of the hinges as she tried to inaudibly close the door without waking me. So thoughtful of her.

Then it would happen again as she came back into the room and slipped out of her nightgown. Breathing heavily as though her lungs were filled with wet cement: It starts to crack as it expands, leaving her breathless. Glissading under the sheets, her body fell into its weathered groove. I ignored the beads of sweat that enamored her skin. I imagine she ignored the sawing notion that I lay a little more still when she left and returned every night.

Ignoring all that, we were able to dispel any doubt in the validity of our marriage: to live a seemingly happy life. To most, we were Ozzy and Harriet: the perfect couple, suspended in the frames of an old tv show.

After the morning preparations, she would cook breakfast while I sucked on the earpiece of my glasses and read the daily paper, complacently staring at the print as it starts to blur from tired eyes. Breakfast, Visine, a cup of coffee, and a kiss from my wife, then I was off to work.

Work was on the 17th floor of the headquarters of Pharmaecopia, the medical conglomerate. My job was to oversee the determining of LD50’s and the testing of the effects of the drugs produced by Pharmaecopia.

LD50 is a term used to define the amount of a substance it takes to kill 50 out of a hundred test patients. For instance, the LD50 of Tylenol is approximately 338mg/kg, or in simpler terms; it would take about 23 grams of Tylenol to kill a 150lb male/female. Completely and utterly useless information. Unless, of course, if you’re trying to overdose. In that case, you would probably want to know the TD50, or even more specifically, the TD100. That would be the toxic dose 100, or the amount it takes to effectively kill every test patient. If you actually reach this number, you’re no longer breathing.

It was also my job to test the side effects of these drugs.

Define irony; a pill designed for the temporary relief of pain caused from headaches and the sorts, can cause rash, hives peripheral neuritis, and liver damage. Other side effects, however rare, include; hypersensitivity reactions and optic neuritis. Currently I am in our monthly executive meeting debating as to whether or not we should add a new line of text to our Tylenol.

Warning: Tylenol use may cause Asthma.

After much collaboration, the executives feel that the risk is not worth the money that it would cost to print an extra line of text. Six words, thirty-two extra characters on every bottle of Tylenol, would get a little pricey.

Self-medication, intertwined with my ignorance, fueled my blissful reality. Empty bottles, like skeletons of a better time, littered the backseat of my car. Each of them mocking me with their homemade prescription labels.

Watching tv, my wife and I would converse about our day. Acquiescent answers of “oh, it was great honey,” and “how was your day?” fell effortlessly and feigned interest in the hollow void where our loving relationship should inhere. To the world, we were perfectly happy. Perfectly, in love.

We were perfectly happy and in love once.

I’ve done everything in my power to forget it. To forget the way we used to kiss. To forget the way I used to watch her sleep, and the smile it brought to my lips.

I forgot it, in order to kill that false hope of ever returning to such a time of true happiness. In it’s nihility; my chemically induced happiness would exist, and wouldn’t allow my mind to avert to this memory gift-wrapped in dolor.

Zoloft, Vicadin, Prozac, Valium, Sacinal, Coreceidin, Propoxyphene, Meperadine, Diphenoxylate. I had no drug of choice, no preference. I chose something-different everyday. Sedated, I could accept my life and make difficult decisions simply.

This is why I have a tattoo of Buddy Holly on my left butt-cheek.

This is how I lived, within the comforting embrace of a blurry accepting haze. Everyday was a rerun of the perfect day just slanted a little different every time; like a different view or angle. But, ultimately, the same day: same events: even the same conversations.