Sincerely October

Winter to summer

An uplifting, reflecting chapter

It's just you now
Things aren't what they used to be.
When you were young you were not alone, you had no choice but to sit with the unwelcome visitor.
You did what you had to do to survive, you stopped fighting and you started playing dead, it's all you could do.
Things aren't what they used to be.
Your voice shook as you called your mother and told her what happened to you.
You used your voice in a way you weren't sure you'd ever be able to.
You wanted to be better, you wanted to be whole, but for a while it was easier to take a pill and fall asleep on your bedroom floor.
You have been an addict for a long time but in those months you reached new heights, you watched yourself become consumed by the chase.
Healing was what you wanted, but it was much easier to wait for the next wave so big it would lift you off your feet.
Things aren't what they used to be.
You know that the drugs are like honey, they are sweet but they will never fill you.
You speak more honestly than you ever have, mold grows in the dark, you understand that if no one can know you're best off not doing it.
You can acknowledge that no matter how scared you feel when the moon is out he isn't here, and the sound of your own breath is your only company.
For so long you thought you would never be able to live with it, but you've grown towards the sun and you now know that no one can fix this for you but you.
No drink or pill will make you whole. No person can pull this string out of you. You didn't choose to lose your power but you must choose to get it back.

Your garden of a mind in bloom
Your poems aren't the rain cloud they used to be, you now can write honestly about sunny days and shedding leaves.
You can think of the right words then you used to, you writing together connects like the ecosystem of a forest rather than paint thrown on a canvas.
You don't think about the chase all the time and when the thought enters your mind you know better than to look for happiness in the same ways you lost it.
You used to reflect on yourself angrily for having evershifting hobbies and passions, and after losing them you are happy to have a mind that loves so many different things.
You want to start dressing as you did before you relapsed, you want to relive pretending to be in dead poets society in your fashions.
You wear summer on your face unlike how you used to. When you smile you mean it.
You still can't seem to remember what happened yesterday, but you feel as if you are coming to your senses, that new pathways are being formed.

Today
You are  determined to get better, more than you've ever been. You see how ugly things got, and you know you don't have to live that anymore. You don't want to be what you once were.
You are picking up the pieces, you want to make things work, you are trying to be more than an ache in your mothers chest.
You write poems about feeling the sun radiate from within you, you write about the rain, but you know it won't always be storming.
You lost your creative touch for some time, but as your crawl your way out of the hole you put yourself in you are an artist again, you don't mind the dirt under your nails.
You worry that the hallucinations will keep getting worse. They've never been this bad. You wonder how everything could be so perfect and your eyes and ears still lie to you. You don't want to ruin things because of this.
You're sober in a way that matters, you're sober because you want to be, you have the distance between you and the drugs and you never want to go back.
You don't think about the rape like you used to. It used to be a constant pain in your chest, and now it doesn't hurt quite like it used to.
You used to find yourself hurting from bruises you caused. You didn't know why you wanted to hurt but you did. Now you don't find comfort in the misery.
The room it all happened in was a haunted house. How much it ached to sleep in the bed you were raped in. There are other rooms in the house and other shades of paint.
I lost me in the process, but I'm glad to see you, welcome home.