Sincerely October

Iris season (part two)

A chapter from an overall happy period in my life.

Do you feel guilty?
It seems in the quiet moments guilt grows within me.
I did many things I wish I never did, I've been many people I swore I would never be.
I wish I had been better, I wish I could go back in time and stop myself before I even considered it.
It seems I proved to myself that the drugs came before everything always no matter what.
I shouldn't have hurt like I did, I should have loved in a real way.
I shouldn't have acted the way I did but that doesn't change much, does it?
Feeling guilty doesn't change that I did what I did, no emotion could take it back.
Something that has helped me hold onto my sobriety is the memories of the things I did.
So I admit I did something I wish I never did, I was a bad man, but today I take the steps to be sure I never go back to my old ways.

Writing in summer
The stories lived loudly and violently in my mind, they replayed endlessly and mercilessly.
I wrote in every passing moment, I wrote late at night and early in the morning, I wrote in any state I found myself in, the stories poured out of me.
I needed that, I needed that more than I needed anything. Let me tell you about how bad it was and still is. Let me tell you about falling apart and accepting a grim fate.
I locked myself away from experiencing life, hidden in my bedroom forever on.
But I can't live like that anymore. I don't want to choke on my vomit, I can't let this be all that I am.
So I try to get better, I try to improve in a way that is real, in a way that matters. I tell the ugly truth, I enjoy beautiful moments, I stop chasing after fleeting highs.
What a lovely thing my life has become, I no longer feel like I'm breaking. I always wanted to feel this way, I just didn't think I ever would.
So maybe there's less stories to tell, I have let them out of my mind.

Your love is gonna drown
It felt like love, I knew better, I always did, but this felt like I was melting into what I had always been looking for.
The search for what will make me whole is over, I have found what I have always been looking for.
Soon I found myself believing that this was it, this was everything, this is the only thing that I needed.
I started to believe that this was the only thing that would make me happy, even if this was killing me I was willing to push those thoughts out of my mind.
Things began to fall apart, things stopped making sense a long time ago. Everything is replaced by a fleeting high, at a complete standstill I am deteriorating.
I stopped making progress months ago, I have been lost in the woods since then. My vision is blurry, I can't recognize that this is ruining me, I'll tell you that this is all I need until the day I take my last breath.
I was deceived, I thought this would fill me but it would only leave me more empty in the end, knowing who I became would only make me more unsatisfied as the sun set.
Soon I would realize I need some distance from this, I need to be different, I can't keep going on like this.
The further I stray away the more the truth is illuminated, it is never going to fill me, it never did and it never will. Soon I would find the happiness I was looking for, soon I would be whole.

That I did
Admitting things ended like they did is an ache in my stomach.
I am just beginning to make sense of things, to make sense of any of it at all.
I don't want to admit that this shattered me on a fundamental level, I can't be forever undone.
But maybe it didn't shatter me like I thought it did, I did what I needed to do to survive, and I made it through, I survived what I thought I couldn't.
It didn't break me, maybe it is true that I experienced a fundamental change to my way of being, but I lived through it, and that's all that matters.
I was made to withstand a storm, and that I did.
I am unsure where to go from here, I am still picking up the pieces, but now I know I was never broken, he never broke me in a way I cannot recover from.