I Can't Get Enough of this Water Stuff

On a night much like this, when I've once again succumbed to the numbing and emotionally murderous wrath of alcohol poisoning, I take a deep, raspy breath and think to myself...

I can't get enough of this water stuff.

Water -- it was my constant companion for over a year.  In various forms, including sports drinks and uber-hydrating liquid goodness.  Water.  Water.  Water, water, water.

I'd like to talk about this nourishing liquid as a biological necessity, and also as a symbol of the ordeal in which I found myself.  And I'd like to do so in the form of a personal letter, addressed specifically to the clear, satiating beverage.

Ahem.  Here I go.

Dear Water,

You have been my constant companion for over a year.  And, if you want to get technical, I guess forever, too.  Because I hear the majority of me is made of you.  Moreover, I think that if someone were to squeeze me very hard, and diligently, a large amount of you would squirt out of me in various directions until I was the shape and consistency of a deflated inflatable tubeman.  Crazy.

Anyway, thank you.  Thank you for being the life-saving goodness you were evolutionarily designed to be to my corporeal body.  I think that's actually repetitive, but you get the picture.  Simply put, you are awesome.  I drank at least sixty-four ounces of you per day for an entire year.  It's odd to think about, because the average human person creature is supposed to hydrate with upwards of sixty-four ounces per day, but I don't think I have ever actually met that goal at any other point in my life.  And that's because it's ridiculously hard to do.  I had to force-feed (force-drink?) myself large amounts of you at a time until I thought I was going to explode, and my parents would have to mop up the bits of me that stuck to the walls and clung to those hard-to-reach corners of the house.  I remember the intense subconscious paranoia of those days, and that at one point how I thought I'd actually killed myself by means of water intoxication.  Did you know that if you drink too much of you, a person can actually die?  I didn't, but Google made sure that I knew about it.  Thanks Google, for feeding into my crazy when I needed it the least.

My year of Interferon treatments and drinking of you into my very soul was extremely rough.  I can't hide that, or not admit to it anymore.  I hated a lot of it.  I hated you, Water.  It amazes me how quickly my perception of you turned around, to be honest.  How quickly I was able to say, "Well, I had enough of you times ten, but I still kind of need you to live... Well okay, you aren't so bad... Oh lordy, you taste fine... Give me some of your goodness... That's it, get in my veins."

After the Interferon treatments ended, I was sent to the hospital with intense pain, only to find out I had a kidney stone.  Do you remember that?  It was probably caused by the interferon, due in part to dehydration (figure that out, you liquid nightmare).  And then, just when I thought you were out of my life forever (or at least until I was thirsty again), there you were -- and in large, ungodly portions once more.  I stocked up on you like I was anticipating the end times.  All available counter space was filled with bottles of you.  Bottles and bottles and bottles and bottles.  I could have kept several families alive for centuries with the amount of you I had to drink.  "This will flush out your kidney stone," they said.  "Just drink a lot of water," they said. "Hey," they said, "Are you drinking a lot of water?"  I laughed.  "Fella," I told them, all morphined up and feeling pleasantly disassociated with my circumstances, "If you knew how much water I'd been drinking, you would dig canals in me and found a city called New Venice."  Needless to say, Water, my dear, you did not work very well in this particular instance.  Or the original instance, now that I think about it.  Otherwise, this second instance would not have been compounded upon the first.  Hmm... Yeah... Water... What it is a good for?

And yet, after all of our complicated history, here you are in my hand (and mouth, and [insert part of the throat that swallows because Wikipedia is unclear about this], and stomach, and bladder) again.  I can't quit you, it's just too hard.  In my more vulnerable moments, I must admit that... I need you.  There, I said it.  Shit.  Can we move on now?  Can we have a normal relationship at this point?  In truth, I need to know that you'll be there for me when I need you, but also that you won't smother me by means of water intoxication.  Maybe what I'm saying is... I love you... but I'm not "in love" with you.  Not anymore.  You were there for me when I needed it, but now I need someone else.  It's true -- and I'm sorry. What can I say?  I'm a complex man, with a lot of layers.  You really only penetrated down into one, or two, or whatever, I'm not a scientist.  There's a girl now, you know, and that's going well.  So I think maybe we should call it quits.  Let's just have what we have, if that makes sense, and go our separate ways.  It seems like your separate way involves the majority of surface area on the earth, so I doubt I'll be able to successfully avoid you for long.  But, ya know, I'm glad we've been able to calm things down a bit, and I'd like to continue that trend.

Thanks Water.

Yours always (and by that I mean only when I absolutely need you),

Kevin