Candlelit midnights

Moss

Chapter 18.

What I love
What am I if not what I love?
I see myself in the things that mean most to me.
I am a stack of notebooks, each filled with stories of the day.
I am a box of crayons and the drawings made by them.
I am a dream on a late night.
I am a teddy bear with a white knit sweater.
I grow to love more everyday, I grow to be more everyday.

The mask
In the vast depths of my addiction I watched myself slip through my fingers like sand.
I looked the other way, but that doesn't change the truth.
I spent so much time isolated, because if I can't be seen what else is there to do?
I felt the need to mask the person I really was, so much so that the only peace I found was in times spent alone.

Write what you know
I am told that when all ideas are lost, I am to write what I know.
At this moment I feel it's more important to write what I am beginning to unsee.
I've unlearned a sense of loneliness that left me aching
I've come to the unknown chasing after a feeling I would not find.
I still have a lot to put down, but I will cherish what has been left behind.

Second grade
I understand that the abuse is over, it has been for some time now, but part of me still lives in fear.
Part of me is stuck in an endless childhood.
I am still confused as why and how things happened the way they did.
I've been told that I am wise beyond my years, but I am not always sure that is true.
I still want to run in hide with the sense of a second grader.

About god
I find it hard to believe in god when I spent my nights reliving the horrors that happened in my childhood bed.
Throughout all the years of abuse, where was god, because I know he was not there.
Despite the aches this will not be taken from me, although he was not there I will find him.

What I will find
I am determined to find what was taken from me.
These experiences stripped me of my connection, childhood, happiness, faith, and bits of myself were lost in the process.
But, these things will not stay gone.
These moments shook me, they pushed me to build walls around myself.
When you live behind a mask you know no connection, but I have put it down with no intention of picking it up again.
I am not rotten work, I am worth the time and effort.
A childhood that leaves you aching simply never ends,
While I may never get back those years there are plenty to come.
Things may be different, but the doors never closed, I will let that child know a life without fear.
These moments will not stop the sun from shining on my skin.
It may always ache but my sounds will scar over.
I do not know of a god that was in those bedrooms, but my faith will not be tainted.
For every moment I was left empty I will fill myself again.

To my dear friend
Throughout the past few years writing has been a companion through the immeasurably rainy days.
I wrote when I felt the ache of my shadow, I wrote when I felt the hollowing of my addiction.
I was always with him, he was there through my greatest sorrows and he listened to what had up to that point gone unsaid.
But now, I want to share moments of a sunrise.

A new perspective
In my life I have a distinct pattern of regarding love and obsession as the same concept.
I have a tendency to idolize and and think endlessly towards those walking through the revolving door.
They would become the center of my mind, I saw this as love but I am now with a different pair of eyes.
I believe deep admiration is not the same as the desire to share life with another.

For when I need to hear it again
In the moments I believe I should pick up a bag or bottle again I will read this letter.
These past few months have been difficult to recall but I do vividly remember the feeling of being insatiable.
Always looking for what I would not find, the more I looked the less I saw.
I was incapable of satisfaction, but there was no contemptment from the start.
Not only was I a vase without flowers but I was truly alone.
I searched endlessly looking for the words to describe the disconnect, but they were not found.
The elation is not worth the aching, I do not want to spent my life chasing after a losing game, I don't deserve to be sucked dry.
I will find myself in pieces, and a dead man cannot glue them together.

Where to put it down
I no longer want to write on this topic but it is a story that demands to be told.
This morning I found myself truly stagnant, I remained still as I watched others trickle out the room, but I couldn't bring myself to follow, as part of me was convinced he was out there waiting for me.
It was a moment in which I was gripped with fear.
I want more than anything to put this down, the weight crushes me more everyday, but where is there to put it?
I don't want to live in unending fear but what else is there to do?
It aches because he should have loved me, it aches because I would be past it.
He saw my admiration and treated me like a party favor.
I am filled with guilt for living such a clouded life.
I'd love to paint another picture, but it seems I do not yet have an untainted canvas.

Bags and bottles
After all the aching and sorrow drugs have brought me I still miss them.
I miss the elation, I miss the calm, I miss the pain in my stomach and burning in my nose.
Truthfully the feeling they brought me I am incapable of sober.
Although this is true, I stopped for a reason.
I was insatiable, there was no filling the hole that was me, I was always looking for what I was incapable of relieving.
I have never known loneliness like I knew loneliness in my addiction.
I forced myself to wear a mask, and in those crowded rooms I was truly alone.
So while I miss them, they are not worth writing more letters to.

Beautiful boy
I spent so much of my life feeling stuck in a perception that left me aching.
The preoccupation was not false, my house was not a home.
Times have passed, and things have begun to sing a new tune.
I am no longer haunted by the stranger in the mirror:

Blue November
What if in all my daydreams I am unhappy?
This is the perspective I know, and what I know is safer than what I do not.
My depression is a worm pair of sneaker, my sense of happiness is a pair I am only beginning to break into.

Seeing the yellow
While I am worn and aching I am learning to see the yellow.
I see the yellow when I feel a light in my chest rather then a hole.
I see the yellow when my passion climbs like vines on a fence.
I see the yellow in the strings between those I am beginning to know.
I see the yellow when I look toward the sky and see a sunrise rather than an endless night.