I wanted to play with the glitter of your soul
so that you could see how bright it sparkled.
I wanted to rip rainbows out of the clouds
so you could appreciate the birth of colors.
I wanted to teach you that anything was possible
so you would chase your dreams however implausible.
I wanted to gift you love until you beamed
and all the pain of life was not so bad as it seemed.
But I did it wrong.
I broke your heart,
in the end,
maybe I should never have tried to start.
This doesn’t feel like the first time I’ve walked through this garden, even if the gate hangs with a different name. The scent of potential hung over you like petrichor drawn in deep and lingering long after the thunder. Half-constructed trails meandered through the beds of saplings, seedlings, and sprouts before disappearing into mere suggestions of where they might continue. The promise of beautiful life elegantly displayed with artistry and love. Grappling to find the light. Just in need of some gentle tending to realize its magic for all to see.
I walked your cobblestones until they turned to dirt and brambled overgrowth. Poured heartfelt time into removing the obstructions so the sun could shine openly and feed the newness aching to reach the stars. Painstakingly watered while I worked, a labor of love. A dream of what was emerging. Marked new trails. Scattered endless new seeds. Coated all the leaves in a spray of herbs and words to drive the bugs away who would seek the generosity of your flesh. Cleared and cleared and cleared the brush, which grew back faster than I could ever seem to keep up with. When my back ached, my hands blistered, and my face was crisp from the sun, I kept at it.
You fed my soul in turn. Nourished my belief in all the possibilities as I saw the petals opening. Sweetly urged me through the darkness of inner nights with the simple innocent affection of new beginnings and growth. I saw shooting stars against my sometimes impenetrable blanket of desperation and fears You inspired me, challenged me, and loved me with bright flowers. Chittering laughter as the wind swept your fragile branches together while a dance of light scattered through your blossoming leaves. Your smile was dew on grass blades refracting the sun and capturing the world in a sphere. You spoke to my heart as I labored to speak to yours.
I heard the flames crackling behind me as I left, and now all you are is ash.
I had no more water left to pour, no more energy left to give. My home garden needed my love as well, and all my time was spent drifting through yours. I failed to find the balance they both needed, and that failure had a heavy price.
Someday, I hope to walk past your arched entry. To see your name proudly gleaming in gold. Friends, and admirers laughing while taking in all the beauty that you are. To know that you burst into life in my wake.
Not because of anything I did.
Because of the magic that has always been you.
Sometimes ash is a better gift than any human effort.
A clean field to start again.
It doesn’t mean I’m not sorry.
It doesn’t mean I don’t wish I’d had more to give.
Or that I hadn’t listened better as you tried to teach me how to tend you better.
Or that I’m not grateful for every moment I was privileged to spend inside your walls.
So very, I wish, I could have, and I am.
Even if you never see this….
….please know I will always love you.
Sweet one with your love so pure,
child stumbling in shadowed fear,
never knowing the right words to speak,
grasping for someone to assure.
You’re seen there in the dark,
space where monsters thrive and hunt.
Nightmares become reality,
you sketch dreams of life with chalk.
No one knows until they know,
though it seems so clear after the fact.
Hard to swallow when nature calls on you to trust,
those larger ones that act yet reap nothing that they sow.
Those distant memories are not such dust,
history and answers with eyes turned in,
never thought I’d see you again,
it was time for the work and at last it was a must.
Let me hold you under glowing stars,
as we watch them dance to the music of infinity,
let me hold you in their friendly glow,
we will sing songs and clean the pain that mars.
You’ve been lost to the ocean of time between,
found at last with a message of hope.
Forgiveness for something you never intended,
it wasn’t your fault, the directors flawed the scene.
Welcome home sweet one with your love so pure,
I’ll wipe your tears and shed my own,
its been forever since you knew where to find a home.
We have a family, and ourselves, this is no lure.
Thank you for keeping alive a spark,
you have it now, a life to live, and a truth to build.
Thank you for finding your way back to me,
lets attach to ourselves,
get ready to do this right and begin from where we start.
Interpersonal dynamics with a radon bomb baby. Burning it straight down to the ground, scream at me like this whole one sided diatribe has become nothing but a song. I hate that our hands touched with venom grasped tight in fists. Cruelty measured in blood ,bruises and spit. Sex without the pleasure and no one ever comes. Where are the guidelines for this shit? I’m no masterpiece and my words sometimes seek wound instead of ears. Verbal lacerations that excite the darkness in both of us until the monster’s out and there’s no going back. Channel that stunner of a mother fucker, find ourselves in prisons far more concrete than the inside of our skulls and with far less forgiving guards. Wasting away, lost to hope and life forever…why? What was gained? I don’t ever dare to ask the other question…what was lost?
Hallowed evening
moonlit sky
lost direction
asking why
mindless choices
numbing thoughts
careless actions
hurtful shots
taking aim
bitter words
lifeless eyes
broken heard
all consuming
voided – gone
checks cashed
runaway mom
take back
decisions made
better life
absent shade
too late
change past
future hopes
dreams last
action counts
words fly
desperate times
for you and I.
Tactical with your hands
the way you smooth my skin
beneath fingers so cool.
A promise held in your palm
where it blends away pain
into pressure and pleasure.
Your touch sifts away the world,
leaves me gasping in relief
that we are not alone.
Wrap me in the mysteries of your dreams,
oh, sweet one with your eyes of green,
where the magic pools and smiles go
to dip beneath that inner glow.
Wash us deserving in the shadows of your pain
where the struggle is real,
no longer a game and
all that once was becomes real again.
“Tom, there’s no way that they can take another round. See that ocular leakage, way over tolerance.”
“Yeah, yeah I know Bill. I can hear too can’t I? Ancestral recall or personal identification with Canis lupus do you think?”
“No family resemblance but that baying is putting my skin on edge regardless. How you want to do this? We’ll get some sympathy views if we drag it out—personal favorite of mine I’ll have you know since this is our first time working together—might even get a couple more weeks out of the budget. Holds a lot of risk with this pair though from what we’ve seen and neither of us wants to explain why we’re carting off a pair of body bags.”
“Fair point. How would you feel about a hybrid? Start off slow but keep an eye on a drop dead date where it all crescendos again and forces a clean cut. Watched Geoff do something similar once. Takes finesse, as always, but it can be done.”
“I’m game, closeouts are your arena anyways from what I hear, I’m better at the fluff and the early game. Just let me know the confidence and insecurity tables you want to use before we start so I can keep things on track.”
“Retro-consideration and empathetic quotients are going to be key factors as well. Can you send Jim to let psych know that we will need their numbers first. Future orientation has always been lacking in 5KY3 and like you said, we don’t want any b-bags.”
“No problem. Such a shame.”
“What?”
“Really thought it was going to work this time.”
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.
To Ink - a blog from Melting Neurons 