A collection of rambles, in these chapters I really pour myself onto the page however messily.
Tw: addiction
Relief
I realized how much I had sucked myself dry when I became entirely hollow.
I had pushed myself to be unable to be happy while sober, I just didn't know because I never was.
I can not put into words how it felt.
How it felt to stare at my ceiling for hours on end.
How it felt to want it more than anything.
How it felt to wonder how long I'd be able to go.
It aches knowing that the only way I can get better is to stop, and the only way to feel better is to do it again.
Who I am had been dripping out of me and I was only beginning to see it.
I was finally able to witness how much of myself I'd lost.
I am not who I was when I relapsed, I lost him bit by bit along the way.
I was able to look at my reflection in the river and see how much it has changed.
The hollowness was absolutely crushing, I spent hours looking for the thing to fill me up, but the pit in me is insatiable.
The things that would normally leave me feeling like myself were a grim reminder of what I am not.
I feel as if I am nothing more than a wanting, a deep unshakable desire to feel it end.
I wanted that relief more than anything, and I found it.
I felt the dry sandy beach that is me finally felt the waves crash upon it.
The relief that washed over me felt like I was finally able to breathe.
I had barely been able to take a breath and I felt my lungs fill with air.
I remember how I turned my head back and just wallowed it in.
It felt nearly divine, I had got what I'd been searching for and what I wanted so badly.
The wanting stopped, I am able to be a human again, I am able to be more than a personification of a craving and a sense of desperation.
It's not elation that I am feeling, I am not floating above the clouds, I am simply no longer hollow of myself.
Picking up the pieces
Something about addiction will break your spirit unlike anything else I've ever come to know.
It's such a strange existence to watch yourself fade away, and most often you are nearly blind to it.
I have drained so much happiness all for the sake of the warm feeling.
I made it a few days into my sobriety before falling back into my old ways.
But I will not let this be the end of me, I will pick up the pieces, I have hollowed myself out but I can fill myself back up once again.
Black and white
When you first find that drug the feeling you get is unlike any other you've come to know.
It's divine, otherworldly, because on a very concrete level life has never compared, and it never will.
I remember those first few times felt like answers to all my questions, like everything I had ever wondered was suddenly no longer something I'd ever ask myself again.
In the beginning life is so incredibly beautiful.
Colors are brighter than they've ever been.
Life shines unlike it ever has.
But when nothing has ever been this light, everything else becomes more dim.
The world becomes darker and soon it's your only source of light.
You find yourself sitting around a candle that is losing its flame.
I realized how the night had seeped into my house and was consuming me.
The candle was flickering.
Through tired eyes I am seeing all of this I swore I'd never witness become the life I don't recognize but call my own.
The drugs don't give me that sense elation they once did, I don't feel happy, I just feel normal.
I am not seeing life as more colorful when I use it, it simply becomes less black and white.
The day before seventeen
Life the day before seventeen is wondering when you'll stop seeing the world in black and white.
Life the day before seventeen is falling asleep on the phone with him.
Life the day before seventeen is watching my childhood fade away but knowing I will always have poems written in crayon.
Life the day before seventeen is writing entries with song lyrics and drawing hearts on the pages.
Life the day before seventeen is a bruise that aches and the sun peaking through the trees.
To disappoint
My addiction was one that lived in late nights and behind curtains.
I always preferred to do things by myself, I never really saw the fun in getting drunk with someone, so I rarely did.
When I relapsed almost nobody knew, and a few months within the year I wasn't letting anyone in.
I didn't see the purpose of worrying people so I didn't.
My addition was one full of solitude and aching loneliness.
When I finally told someone, when I told him and let him into my life, I realized that I needed to do better.
For him and myself, nobody deserves to wonder if the one they love will make it home safe.
Schizophrenic ramblings
I guess I was always able to dismiss the hallucinations and delusions as something other than what they were.
I didn't know what to label them, the visions and the false beliefs, but I told myself if I could function despite them then it was nothing to worry about.
I remember believing in things I can't imagine even thinking of, I talked to people who weren't there, and interacted with a world that didn't exist outside my mind.
Schizophrenia is a hell of a thing to live with and to admit that it's a part of your life is entirely terrifying.
It is always a worry in the box in my attic that I will not always be able to keep it contained.
That I will not always be able to keep it hidden.
On being seen
I spent much of the past year isolated, I was alone in a crowd and spent much of my time locked away in my bedroom.
I enjoyed my time being separate, but it ached.
People can't hurt what they don't know but they also can't love it.
I have begun to let people see what I thought I'd never share.
It feels incredibly relieving to be seen.
YOU ARE READING
Candlelit midnights
PoetryA poetry book written during a darker time in my life, covering topics like addiction and relapse along with happy and romantic moments. Although the original title was different I choose this title to represent how writing was a light in the dark...
