Moss and Mushrooms

September rambles

A chapter with both uplifting and depressing poems.
TW: isolation, addiction/substances, depression, SA

Nothing new
Despite whatever I tell myself I am endlessly left with a sick feeling in my stomach when I sit with the fact that no one will ever know the full story.
I cannot stop myself from molding myself into something easier to swallow. I am yet to find the person who can know everything.
I often find myself wishing I hadn't opened up in the ways I did, I feel seen through, I am naked.
Forever pretending, forever acting on a stage, forever trying to be digestible.
I carry these things with me, they weigh on my heart, but I am tired of doing anything but this.
Will anyone ever know? I don't think so. I don't think they should.
I made mistakes and I will live with them.
I am relentlessly bothered by the fact that no one will ever know everything. No journal entry, no person, no poem, the truth will always be molded.

The weight of regret
I never thought I was the person to behave in such ways.
I always thought I was better than this, but I showed myself I am not.
Will I ever tell anyone? I don't think I will.
I am surprised and unsettled to know that these things live within me.
The moment made sense to me, it felt as if I had arrived at what I had been looking for, but now it is an ache in my chest.
Why am I like this? What does this say about me? Why did you do it?
Sometimes I sit with what I did, I stand in the same room with it and I ask myself why.
I think god gave me a chance that day. Two paths diverged.
Ruin everything you have been given, ruin yourself and those around you, or try, really try to be someone good.
Even if no one knows, even if I take my last breath before I speak of it, I know what I did, and I have to live with it.
Elliot, are you the man you think you are? Elliot, do you think people like that have a chance of ever being good?
Are you sick of yourself? Do you mean it?
Those moments scared me, the ground shook under the weight of the person I was.

Here I will miss
I'm living in an endless sunday, I am living in a world that finally feels breathable.
I spent so long looking and one day I would realize I have found what I wanted.
I sit in a crowded theater and read, I highlight quotes from every page, and a woman asks me about what I am reading.
I write happy poems, and for a moment they do not feel like forcing flowers from a sick man.
I start to feel like maybe I can get to where I should be, that maybe the drugs won't be the thing that defines me.
I don't think or dream about the rape like I used to. He is gone now.
I listen to the same songs I always listen to, I listen to songs I've ever heard before.
I put too much milk in my coffee and drink more coffee than I should.
Sometimes I miss the drugs but the overarching theme is that they are behind me.
Those pockets of my mind that felt so unacceptable are still hard to sit with but I don't berate them for existing. I know they are there for a reason.
I go to AA meetings almost every day, there things make sense, there I feel at home.
Life is a cabin in the woods, separate, lovely, and quiet.

Alcoholics anonymous
These things make sense.
I am not sure how I will pull it out of me, I am not sure how I will make my way through the twelve steps, but I want what they have.
It's the only thing that's ever stuck, the only phase in my life in which sobriety lingered.
These people know me, even if they don't know my name they know what it's like to want like I want.
They know what it's like to wake up and get drunk, they know what it's like to watch yourself become everything you never wanted to be, they know the hollow feeling I felt, they know what it's like to ruin your life again and again.
We laugh, we cry, we talk about hope and healing, we talk about aching and dying.
Words will never capture the power of the rooms, the power of knowing that these people made it to the other side.

Aching summers
Sometimes the memories come flooding back to me.
Most of them are gone with no chance of return, but sometimes I recall what those nights were like.
I remember riding my bike to the library, I remember being drunk while checking out the books behind the counter, I remember organizing the storage closet.
I remember riding my bike all around my city, taking the same path every time. I remember stealing cough syrup from the store near my house.
I remember the music I used to listen to, I would listen to the same songs on repeat for hours, because this song knows what it's like to be me.
I remember the late nights spent drunk and high. I remember sleeping in my fort every night. I remember the endless hours I spent writing.
I remember him, I remember thinking that out of everyone on this planet he knew me, he knew what I was more than anything. I remember talking about him endlessly, I remember talking to him endlessly.
I remember writing while high, I remember the lines written about my worst moments, I remember his comments on each poem.
I remember clinging onto anything that made me feel okay. I remember feeling like I was falling apart, piece by piece.

Maybe
I don't remember when it started, but one day I would realize I had been hallucinating for months.
Everything is tainted and overpowered by the hallucinations, nothing untouched by them.
The world distorts and changes and you know that's not real and you don't know how to live with it, but you do.
For a moment you accept that maybe this is just the way it is, that this is just the way you are, but it doesn't have to be.
Maybe you don't have to make peace with these false perceptions.

Arcane
I've accepted that this is the way things are, that no amount of denial will change that.
I don't want to be this way, I wish things were different, but this is just how it is.
Sometimes when I write about it, I vaguely mention it with the hopes that no one sees beyond the metaphor.
I live my life knowing it's true, I understand that this distorts things and my understanding will help me make sense of the world.
I tried to write it down, but seeing the list made my stomach ache. As the list gets longer it will soon be thrown away.
I talk about it with few people and share the details with even fewer.
I try to give it a place to live that's not within my mind, I try to give it a home outside of myself.
I don't really know where to go from here. I don't know how to live with this, and for once I don't want to talk about it.
The truth is too heavy to address. Every time someone knows I wish they didn't.
But I try to be with the truth. I sit with the everchanging truth, I sit with the fact that this is the thing that kept me together.
I let myself be whatever I need to be. I'll like this be whatever it needs to be.

Known and seen
My heart will always have a bedroom for him.
When I was at my lowest I found solace in the fact that he knows what this is like.
Let me tell you how awful I am, let me tell you about how much this aches, let me tell you everything.
He somehow always knew what to say, even when I was talking about things he didn't understand.
Even at my worst he saw something in me, and he stayed around even when he shouldn't have.
Not once in my life have I been more obsessed with another human being.
He dominated my thoughts, I had dreams about him, I wanted him more than anything.
I shared my writing with him and it felt like letting him live in my skin.
He wanted to read my poems, he wanted to know what it was like.
I remember the nights I spent talking to him, I remember the rambles he would wake up to.
He made me feel so special, so lucky to have been known by him.