Sincerely October

Maelstrom - Music

M for dictionary poetry.

Maelstrom
The stories retell themselves again and again.
You are deeply elated and overjoyed until one day it comes to a piercing end,
Suddenly you find yourself spending most of your days wasting time until you can go to sleep.
You walk around your empty house of a mind looking for the thing that will fill you, looking for the thing that will make you whole again, but you won't find it.
You feel that you have been consumed by a seemingly endless gray.
It feels like the truth, it feels like something you couldn't ever shake, something you could never do anything but spend your entire life doing.
The moments stack up upon each other, it feels that they stand taller than you ever could.
The low feeling is so deafening that it's hard to imagine a life without it, but it is yet another fleeting moment in time.

Magnolia
I step out of my body and watch my life from the corner of my bedroom.
When I think about how things used to be I am overcome by a sense of relief, relief that it didn't last, relief that I made it through, relief that I didn't die like I thought I wanted to.
I realize how lucky I am. I spent so much time feeling unlucky, like I never really had a chance, but I always did.
I always had a chance, even when I didn't think I did, even when everything within myself told me I didn't, there was always a part of me that wanted to get better.
I wanted to be happy. I wanted to find a way to live that wasn't a life given away to a substance. I wanted to feel that I had healed from my past.
I never thought I'd get it, but I did. I never thought I'd be truly happy, but I am.

Mail
Letters to eight:
It's not your fault. I know you're scared but you won't always be. He stops hurting you. One day you won't have to pretend. One day you won't have to see him anymore.
Letters to eleven:
You survived, he didn't get you in the end. It happened for the last time that night. It's not your fault. You will learn from this.
Letters to thirteen:
You won't spend your whole life feeling like you are pretending, even if it's what you do now. You're doing the right thing. You will find your way.
Letters to sixteen:
Life isn't breathable now but it will be. You will find your peace. You will find a way to live untouched and untethered.

Masculine
Recently I often catch myself wondering if I am man enough.
If my chest is flat enough, if my voice is deep enough, if my history of girlhood is dripping from my fingertips.
My childhood lingers in my voice, no one told me how to sound like a man.
I feel like a freak of nature, like my mixed characteristics are something that is to be judged and berated.
I look like a man until the sunsets, until my clothes aren't baggy and layered, until binding my chest fails me.
I am constantly wondering if I'm doing this right, I wonder what that even means, I wonder if manhood is something inherent or something that is earned, and if being a man in the traditional way is something worth fighting for.

Melancholy
I always find myself back here, I always find myself wondering why I walked down this path once again.
The path of wasting time until you can go to sleep, the path of writing the same sad stories using similar words each time, the path of listening to the songs that remind me of my worst periods.
It's suffocating, it's deafening, it's comforting.
I used to love this and now I don't care. I used to adore this but now it's only another thing I can do to pass the time.
It makes me question things. What matters to me if everything fades in the end? What am I if I am not reliable?
Is this a reality I will have to live with until I am old and weak? Will this stop me from getting there?
Am I trying hard enough? Am I ever trying hard enough? Will I ever feel like I'm trying hard enough?
I don't want to be the man who is always in a mood of sort, but I am a man who is always in a mood of some sort
I don't want to be seen as someone who never gets better, I want to get better, yet here I find myself time after time.