Moss and Mushrooms

In between

A chapter written during a time where I felt like I was in between being happy and unwell.
TW: substances/addiction, unhealthy relationships with food, SA undertones, hallucintions, isolations

The same story
I have more distance between me and the drugs than I ever believed myself to be capable of.
I made the grand assumption that this was simply my life, I get high again, again, again, and one day when god loses hope in me I choke on my vomit. That will be the end.
But I don't want that. Maybe I don't have to be extraordinary but I cannot give my life away. My pain cannot define me.
I miss it sometimes, in a way that is illogical and senseless, it's really not worth missing.
I want to be sober more than I want anything. I know what awaits me on the other side.
I know the man I am when I'm drunk, I know what it's like to feel sick for months at a time, I know the dissatisfaction that hollows you of all my favorite parts about myself.
So I'll write the same poems over and over, I'll talk about it too much, I'll pray to a landline, I will endlessly remember how bad it was.

Wednesday, September 29th, 12:19 AM
I listen to the same album over and over again, the lyrics slowly carved into my bones.
I go to AA meetings and talk with people who want the same things I do.
I stay up late and wake up at noon, I have strange dreams every night and sleep through my alarms.
I take my notes in colorful highlighter, each paragraph getting harder to read.
I have some level of acceptance of it all but I am still afraid to write it down.
I fill my journal with rambles, numbering and dating the pages.
During the lowest point of the greatest time I write poetry on a glowing screen in the dark.
I don't know how I will find my way through it all but I will.
I drink coffee with milk, as I watch the same videos over and over again.
I listen to a popular album and music from the 2000s indie scene.
I send out invitations to my birthday party, I plan what I will wear on the day of the party.
I fear that life will soon be approaching me too fast, I fear I am almost eighteen.

Weight issues
You've never had a healthy relationship with food, what everyone else has is always out of reach, and that is crushing.
You hate the way your body looks, you hate your soft jawline and chubby cheeks.
You believe you would be beautiful, really beautiful, if you just lost some weight.
So you try, you count your calories, you measure your milk, you stop putting creamer in your coffee.
But you always mess it up, you always put the weight back on, you always eat far too much when it's pushing the early hours of the morning.
You're sick of it, you just want to wear a smaller size, you want to be pretty, you want to like the way you look, but you can never seem to.
You fold in on yourself, you eat in ways you know you'll regret, you do it day after day after day.
In your head being thin would make you so much better, because in your mind everything you do is embarrassing until you are skinny.
You want this more than anything, yet the cycle repeats for months at a time.
Each month I set the goal to lose a few pounds, and when the month ends and I review the list it is yet another month in which I failed.
You still believe you will get it, that if you can just balance the right habits, take the right medications and do the right things, you'll get there, one day.

Somewhere to live
Every way of documenting it feels like a notebook that will soon have its pages ripped out.
I cannot write it down without fear of being found out, for fear of being seen in ways I'd rather not.
Telling people feels like being naked in the woods, vulnerable in ways I despise, uncomfortable in ways I cannot express.
It needs a place to be, it needs to be held by something outside of the library in my mind.
Maybe I'll make a video about it, maybe I'll make a collage, maybe I'll find somewhere to write about it.
I want to give it a place to live that's not my own mind, somewhere for this to be that exists outside of me.

Lovely
When he first spoke to me I felt so lucky that someone like him chose to speak to someone like me.
He used words I had never heard before, he was thoughtful and thorough.
He would read my writings each time I posted them, leaving lengthy comments about each poem.
He understood addiction, he understood what it's like to be sick for months at a time, he knows what it's like to lose all your favorite parts of yourself in the process.
I was alone but I went to bed every night knowing that he knew me, and he understood me more than anyone.
Maybe he didn't always get it, maybe he didn't always know what it was like to be me, but he listened and heard, and that's what really mattered.
I found myself becoming obsessed with him, I wanted him more than anything, he was everything to me.
I thought about him from the moment I woke up until the moment I fell asleep, I had dreams about him and the things we could do together. I had an endless list of romantic fantasies involving him.
One day I would realize that I was far too invested, that I put too much weight onto someone who didn't feel the way I did.
I became angry at him for not loving me like I loved him, and because of that he was forced out, but he came back.
Now he is just a person to me, not an angel or demigod, but a person who is lovely.

Sun shining on my skin
Out of everyone I've ever met he is the one most determined to get better.
He wants you to know that you don't have to go through this alone.
Tell me about your day, tell me about tomorrow, tell me about the art project you're working on.
He is authentic in the purest form, he is so comfortable in himself that I feel safe enough to be myself.
He always knows what to say, he always knows how to make sense of things, even when I don't.
He's like the sun shining down upon me.

Distortions and false perceptions
I walk through my empty home.
I see shadows standing in my doorway, I see pitch black hands, I see a little boy and a tall man watching over me.
I hear ringing and rattling, mostly in my right ear but sometimes both. Everything around me is distorted and unreal.
Everything I see and hear is tainted by the hallucinations, they bleed into everything.
I stand defeated because I know this isn't normal. I stand defeated because the strong antipsychotics are not strong enough.
I wish I could turn them off for a day, what a joyful day that would be. How amazing it would be for everything to look as it really does.

They know something I don't
In every space I share with another person I am constantly questioning if I am doing something wrong.
Should I say this? Is this too much? Am I talking about myself too much? Do you know I am listening?
I always feel like I am doing something so abnormal, something beyond strange, but what exactly that is I cannot pinpoint.
I missed the joke. I don't understand what they are saying. I showed them too much. I rambled on for too long. I complained too much.
The questions linger.
I feel like I am fundamentally different in an awful way, that something everyone knows how to do I can't even begin to understand.
They know how to be people, they know how to laugh, they know how to talk to each other, and I have the sense that I don't, that my approach is beyond abnormal.

Like him
I spent much of my childhood being visited late at night, visited by a man who never listened when I said no, visited by a man who never cared for me like he should have.
I know what it's like to be raped, I know how it feels to be a doll who lies on her back and remains barely conscious as it happens night after night.
If I want to be anything, I want to be everything but him.
I never want to go to bed knowing I made someone feel the way I did.
This fear, the fear that I am like him, pervades my every move.
I turn parts of myself off because I know I cannot be a predator if I do not have an appetite for such things.
I will not participate, I will not even begin to entertain the thought, it sickens and disgusts me.
I sometimes feel like a monster for the things I experienced, because I know my own flesh in blood did this to me, we share DNA.
I have a lingering worry that sits in the pit of my stomach, the worry that one day some dormant part of me will awaken and I will be like him.
I fear that one day I will be no better than him.
I know I am better than him, I told myself that if I ever worried about this in a real way I would kill myself for those thoughts, I would rather be dead than be like him.
Still in the shadows behind my house of a mind I worry that this is who I am.
I feel like a predator for thinking a girl is pretty, I feel no better than him when I like the way she looks in that dress.

What I like about me
I write passionately and endlessly, I fill stacks of journals, I write hundreds of poems.
I try to be better, I want to improve, I want to be a happier and kinder human being.
I have dark brown curly hair, brown eyes and long eyelashes.
I flap my hands when I am excited.
I listen to 2000s indie and 1960s hippie tunes.
I read and highlight quotes from every page.
I talk at length about the things I love.
I am fractured but whole.
I wear dress pants, collared shirts, and sweaters.
I keep all my diaries, art journals, and poems in my night stand.
I have strange and vivid dreams, I recall them most every night because I taught myself in sixth grade.