Sincerely October

Winding roads and strange destinations

A collection about my negative thought patterns (a vent chapter).

Reminders
You dream of the drugs until the sun rises.
You walk into a store looking for what would change the way you feel, you wonder if they wouldn't notice a bottle or two going missing.
You listen to your favorite songs but are bitterly reminded of the way you used to live.
You want to get high when you feel the sun on your skin. You want to get high when you hear the rain pouring. You want to get high to wake up. You want to get high to mellow out. You want to get high because the wind is blowing in your direction. You want to get high because the sun rises in the morning.
You've lived like this for so long that every sensation is followed by wanting to change it.
You know that you have to peel back every layer of what you taught yourself and learn to live with life on life's terms.

What I thought I was and what I am
I'm picking up the pieces, most of which are of glass I can't recall breaking.
I did a lot of things that make me wonder what type of man I am. I did a lot of things that made myself hard to live with. I did some things there's no coming back from, I said things I can't take back.
I want to apologize in a way that matters but I lied too much for anyone to believe me.
I lied and stole and hurt to get what I wanted.
I don't remember what I did and part of me doesn't want to, to admit that I am a bad man, to admit that I hurt people.
It's so strange to have guilt for things I can't remember.
I did what I did but I wasn't there.
"I don't know what I said but I'm sorry. I can't remember how many times I did it but I won't do it again."
I'm not the man I thought I was. I thought I was a Sunday in early spring, but I have hurt too many to be the meadow I thought I was.

I wish I knew
I have a house of a mind, I always have.
I live in my own little world, people have told me that my whole life.
I live in the disconnect, I am not fully here and I don't think I've ever been.
It's safer there, it's safer to close my eyes and leave. I keep running from what's in front of me, even if I know I have nothing to hide from, not anymore.
I have an unshakeable sense of isolation, because for a while I kept my walls high, yet I still have the sense that I am hiding.
What am I hiding? I can't be sure. What are you running from? I couldn't tell you. Why don't you want to be seen? I wish I knew.

Missing you
I know this is not the path I wish to take, in this meadow I know better than to take that road.
The flowers bloomed in spring, but I crushed them beneath my shoes, and they will never grow back.
I can't go back. I can't go back and expect to be the person I was before taking the path of the trampled daisies.
Yet I miss the feeling, I miss the burning in my nose, I miss summer in a bag.
I wish I could live a life in which the drugs did not contort me the way they do, I wish I could get high again, but I know what comes with that, and I want to be defined by more than a craving.
So I will miss it until I fall out of love. I will swallow my desires until I can let go.

Strained in April
I am dreading the anniversary of the day I told and I couldn't tell you why.
It feels like my birthday, the start of a life in which things made so little sense yet were perfectly illuminated.
I thought the rape would kill me, it has already brusied me and gave me a foundation of rotten wood, at points I didn't think I would make it to the one year anniversary.
I wasn't ever supposed to tell, I wasn't allowed to, not under his influence, and for a while I didn't, but now I know better than to listen to him.
I have changed myself in the past year, I feel like I am finally breathing, I am unbound like I always wanted to be.
It doesn't hurt like it used to, he is not my god who left me to rot, he is just a man who knew better but didn't care, he is nothing special and nothing worth losing my life over.
Even when it was over I felt as if he was still pulling the strings of my puppetry, I knew he was long gone but his touch lingered. It doesn't, not anymore.
I don't think about him everyday. I don't feel so scared. I want to live happily, I know I am more than my bruises.
The rape defined me for a long while, I think it had to, I needed to feel the waves in order not to drown.
I think I made it through the worst of it, I can breathe for the first time in my life without his hand on my shoulder.
With all this in mind I couldn't tell you why I am afraid for May 12th, April hasn't ended, and I know my little dark age is over.
Yet I know I have made it this far and that I have nothing to be scared of.

In my own little world
I live more in my mind than I do anywhere else.
In my world things like that don't happen, in my world the sun never stops shining, in my world I feel more real than I do when I look at my feet on the ground.
The world around me feels like it's made of plastic, it doesn't look real, not to me. I stopped the drugs a little while ago but my eyes have some left in them, my perceptions consistently fail me.
My eyes don't tell the truth, they show me paintings, not photographs.
I hallucinate when I am pouring my morning coffee, I hallucinate when I take a walk that should be serene, I hallucinate when I turn the lights off to go to sleep, it never stops.
I don't think I am unlovable but I don't think I am easy to accept either.
I feel as if I am fundamentally flawed, I don't think that's true but I'm far too scared to test the waters.