Moss and Mushrooms

Candle lit midnights

The first chapter for Moss and Mushrooms, largely a vent chapter with occasional hopeful undertones.
TW: addiction/substances, sexual assault, depression

You will not find it here
I miss it, I miss it more than I have ever missed anything.
I know that what I had was not happiness, I know that drugs will not give me what I am looking for.
If I go back to it I don't know where I will find myself.
I sometimes imagine myself sitting in front of my own grave, I remind myself that this will not fill me, that this will lead me to my last breath if I let it.
I miss the breath after doing a line. I miss staying up until the sun rises. I miss drinking myself to sleep.
I could fill notebooks upon notebooks of reasons why I shouldn't.
I never want to feel that way again, I never want to act in the ways I did, I don't want to start over, so I imagine myself sitting in front of the headstone.
I do have a chance, this doesn't have to define and eventually end me, I can find my way into a life I do not have to run from.
I know the way I felt then wasn't real, it was a chemical con job, and for a moment it may fill me but it will only leave me empty in the end.
Know that whatever you are looking for will not be found here, know that this is not the thing that will make you whole.

Bitter and lingering
The questions and stories and thoughts replay in my mind over and over again.
I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to be the man who never got over it, the man who never really moved on.
A part of me still lives in that room. I died that day.
No matter where I go somewhere within me lives a child who keeps asking the same questions.
Why did you touch me like that? Why didn't you love me enough not to hurt me? Why don't you love me?
A small part of me wishes he would have finished the job like he said he would.
You said you would kill me. Why didn't you? Take me into the woods and bury my body in the leaves. What's stopping you? Why shouldn't you?
I am carrying a weight I cannot put down. A dreadful past is always lingering.
I am forever looking for the thing that will replace the skin that you put your hands on, always wishing for something that made this less suffocating.
I would love to tell you about it. I would love to tell the story of what happened again. It lives so loudly within me. Still, what is there to say?
What is left to explain and deconstruct and digest?
It broke me and I don't know if there's a way to fix this. I cannot remove the bitter taste of his touch.

Inside out
Don't be this way.
Don't ruin this good moment.
Everyone's happy right now? Why aren't you? Why does every moment that passes feel like waiting until it's over?
Constantly looking for the thing that will fill me, never finding it.
No matter where I go or who I become I find myself turning back to late nights with melancholy music and poems like this.
Are you sick of yourself? Do you really mean it?
I would love to talk about it, I'm dying to, but I don't want this to be "me."
I don't want to be forever stuck in a past that is long gone, forever having monthly psychiatrist appointments, forever looking but not finding.
I want to be more than this, I have always wanted to be more than this.
Is this just the way things are? Sometimes you will spend days in bed and sometimes you'll wonder why you ever stuck around.
Is that life? Is that all there is? When the sun sets, is this what is waiting for me?

Tree house
Writing is my own little home I can take with me anywhere I go.
It's always there for me, even when I am not looking for it.
Any moment can be filled with it, I can write poems in my notebooks or on a glowing screen, I tell stories in my head.
It's always there, something you cannot take from me.
Writing captures all the moments that I never want to let go of, writing captures the deafening winter and the Iris summers.
Writing is something I hold so close to my chest with my arms wrapped about it, this is mine and that will never change.

The day will come
I will survive it, I will survive it like I always do.
This moment will pass and I will live to know that it did.
Today life seems deafening and bleak, life seems like something I want to hide away from, but I will find happiness.
I will feel the sun shining on my skin, I will discover something that makes me feel whole, I will drink another cup of coffee with far too much sugar in it.
I will write a lengthy diary entry about finding what I have been looking for, I will write a happy poem, I will laugh with someone that loves me.
I will find what I have been looking for.