Addiction is a Beast

To highlight the feeling of insanity that comes from active addiction.
Feels about right.

A sense of calm resignation is starting to settle in. So often shunted aside still for madcap panic and desperate flailing as this faltering shell of a body which carries an acidic sonofabitch that wants out while refusing to take pleas, no’s, or prayers as a hint to get lost. It’s there on the outskirts as the magnitude, the absolute fucking magnitude of how colossally I’ve screwed the lives of those around me up, while trying to ruin my own existence..

It always sat there just on the outskirts, even when it should have been blatant. The self concocted cocoon of ignorant bliss I had woven around myself to keep the realities of life and the need for growing up at bay made sure that even if I was looking at it head on, I wouldn’t see. I’d spin it internally, sometimes to deflect the judgement and actions needed, sometimes to punish myself further and feel so amply deserving of it while begging confusion to those closest to me.

God help me. I sat there blind to love, affection, nurturing, opportunity, friendships, my children, the actuality of LIFE itself. 

All in favor of an endless repetition of the same monotonous actions. Awake, chase, get high, drink, crash, rinse and repeat ad infinitum, The same rhythm that most humans are going through their awake, cabinet, coffee, drink, functional, productive, competent portions of their day to day.

What has it cost? 

I’m sitting in the mountains which are my peaceful place, body too exhausted to hike or sleep. Dimly aware that I’ve imploded yet another beautiful person’s life, tucked mine into an 18’ trailer, and spiraled into oblivion while desperately fighting a battle that can’t be won on my terms. Beginning to come around the edges of what that actually means–to be so viral, so toxic and caustic in someone’s life that you can literally see it reshape their entire being from what they were prior–knowing that even if it wasn’t intended, that’s what happened. 

To know that the fiber of your being is so saturated in selfish self-hatred that it closes you off to the possibility of trusting and believing that anyone could actually love you for a person you don’t even know any longer, yourself? Knowing that sounds like Narcissistic Personality Disorder and digging around to see if there’s ways to be less of a screaming manchild asshole only to find that if it’s really the case, there ain’t shit to be done?

To realize that I don’t even fucking know what things I actually enjoy in life? To have focused so many countless hours on a single destructive course that it has literally obliterated all remnants of understanding about what joy means. How love is shown. What fun is. How to treat others or myself in any sort of a humane way laced starkly with the deep confusion of always being at odds with myself to begin with. That I have erased inborn gifts, destroyed my mind, poisoned my body wildly–that I will die younger than I had to and may never have the chance to see my children again. That my children have been growing up without their father.

Being aware now of the wreckage and turbulence behind my passing from those unlucky enough to have had me walk into their life “chaos incarnate” as I used to joke. To not even be able to apologize in any sort of a meaningful way yet because time and action is all that really will matter, could matter at this point. To not be able to say thank you sufficiently where I mean it within such limited scopes as I’m tooled to have the capacity for. The endless dreams that have died in lieu of one more hit, one more drink.The beautiful dreams that staggered onward beneath the weight only to have the carpet ripped out from under them again. The smashed hopes that held them aloft for so long.

It is seriously time for a change. So for the first time in YEARS, I’m throwing in the towel, surrendering, and just going with it. I have a bed at a program starting in a few days, a kennel for the dog, a storage spot for the trailer/home, and a hiatus from school while I straighten myself out and make some so critically needed changes. Peter Pan with a crack pipe and a 100u shot–fuck it’s old. 

The next time I write will be on the back end the next 30+ days probably, so until then, thanks for everything and all the kind words, help, camaraderie, and digital awesomeness that is everyone else out there. Addiction’s a beast. Mental illness is a beast. But neither gives any permission to keep perpetuating that cycle endlessly or to inflict them on those around you.

Time to give up the fight and go back to the drawing board, starting fresh all over again.

Words

Take them
speak them
see them
churn
Syllables crawling
spinning, clawing
freely turned.
Whip them
soothe them
love to let them
linger for the burn.
Aching blessing,
listen guessing,
minds unfurl.
Use them,
consume them,
believe them,
don’t be spurned.
Light step dances,
crossing lips,
and tongue tips,
spilling hope
for which we yearn.

Heart in the Mountains

My heart is hammering in my chest and sweat is a faucet from my disheveled hair staining a shirt, and lower down, jeans that haven’t been changed in days. I feel quite certain that death is imminent on several levels, but man look at the view.

White water crashing through a mountain side so big it could just as easily be the backdrop for a movie set as be real. This trail I’m perched next to leads deep into the peaks and crosses the river in the way that a glitter strewn hike at a unique deep woods hot springs did many lifetimes ago. I have no doubt the top is beautiful–but so–right now, is the view from down here. Such as it is, even in the kaleidoscopic myriad of events in life we sometimes have to look up out of the maze instead of revel from the heights.

If I had accepted that as a mentality, I surely would have been able to enjoy the elevation up there better as well as rolled more smoothly with the valleys.

Tomorrow is another day, and for the moment, while I may have found myself here on the wings of a story that felt heartbreaking familiar, and events that leave my imagination twisted with concern and a sense of deepest confusion – I’m thankful that this is where it brought me.

I have nightmares nightly, unending tweaks with mental and emotional nudging to contend with daily it seems, all repercussions from some shitty life choices. Carving out this moment was so worth it. I mean after all what good is being an oddball if you can’t find yourself in the forest half expecting friendly woodland critters to come out and greet you with sage wisdom and adventure?

All while sober as a clam.

Today has been a much better day than I thought it would be, thank you cosmos, or Loki, or God. I’m sorry for any missteps along the way as I stumble through this life looking for footprints home while leaving some new ones of my own. I’m heartbroken all over again at my amazing capacity for ignorance and irrationally hurtful actions to those that care(d) enough to wade through the soup of a catastrophe my life has been. I have always thanked the world in glib commentary, resentment, stubborn bullheadedness, and plain ire – rarely gratitude. The stupendously complicated feelings of loss and remorse I feel over the mixed actions and emotions I’ve had of late makes it feel good to find at least one solid sensation that I can rest my hat on momentarily.

One day isn’t much to repair a lifetime of shit parades and Richter scale registering chaos…but it’s a starting point and I’m appreciative for it.