Accepting what I cannot

a ballad about California

Bisexual anthems played on the uke

Keeping my drugs inside a notebook

Sobriety sounded like acoustic guitar being played in the morning

Coffee before my post-therapy mourning

I doubt I have vices, but you can try to convince me

In meetings that teach you the dangers of self-pity

If I were told in two years, there would be a plague

I think I would have been less of a human grenade

Would have listened to the ex-heroin addict tell his life story

Pretended those meetings were never that boring

AA made my world move too slow

Blood boiling over the lack of control

But I do miss making jewelry at sundown before curfew

Venting to other survivors about the people who have hurt you

The nicotine that kept me from the maximum amounts of relapse

The stickers on my head the waiting on labs

But who the hell messes up that bad?

Being closely monitored in one of Cali's best rehabs

I remember wanting to start my life in LA

Not an uncommon wish for someone so strange

Malibu beaches taken for granted

Wildfires putting abrupt endings to my wishes that were so close to being granted

Rich folk reminding you how easily they could just leave you in the streets

Of Ocala Florida in less than two weeks

Well I was going mad hearing about my roommate's dead wife

Alcoholics anonymous calling me selfish for wanting to take my own life

Hearing about tragedies that were supposedly worse than mine

Feeling like at the end of recovery there was some sort of prize

I drink a glass and jokingly laugh about how my old therapist would be disappointed

Two more glasses and the thin line between jokes and truth become distorted

A rock to symbolize my awakening

A manifestation of cleanliness I just could not take with me

But I still hold onto the gifts I felt I did not deserve

My ballad for my stay in California shall not go unheard