Moss and Mushrooms

Raining Octobers

A mixed chapter covering several different topics.
TW: depression, addiction, hallucinations

Seeking connection
You believed yourself to be alone, you believed that something within you was fundamentally unlovable.
The rejection left you aching, because you wanted to be seen and cared about, but you weren't sure you ever would be.
Soon enough you'd find yourself sitting in a room with people who wanted to be there, with people who listened to you and liked you for what you are.
They want to be with you, they want to see you again, they want to hear about all the strange things going on in your head.
You realize that those things you hate about yourself are things you have in common, you realize that you had no reason to be ashamed.
You feel silly for ever thinking you were alone, because they were always within view, you just weren't looking.
You fill the room with laughter, they answer questions you thought they never knew, you realize they remember the things you told them last year.
They ask to see you again. They take you out to breakfast. You have inside jokes. They invite you to a concert later this week.

Nothing left to say
You spend your whole life trying to verbalize the pervasive sense of unhappiness that lives within you.
You use hundreds of different metaphors to write about the aching feeling you get in your chest when people say "there's always something with you."
You use imagery to detail the stories that replay in your mind and stay in your heart.
You want to be happy but you never stay there for long. There's always something wrong, something you can't quite explain.
Part of you believes that if you were to write it perfectly, if you were to capture the blood and aching, you would rid yourself of it. So you spend years trying to describe it.
In every room you enter you search for it, you keep a spot for it in your backpack in case you ever come across it, you spend every moment looking for it.
You find that you are telling the same stories over and over again. You heal nothing, say nothing you haven't said before, and go nowhere.
You're tired of writing about it, you have nothing left to say, you have no words left within you, yet you still find yourself writing about it.
You want to write about being happy, and sometimes you do, but you always find yourself coming back to it.
You start to question things, you wonder if some people, people like you, are not happy people and never will be, if you are one of many people who will never be truly happy because you are incapable of it.
You recognize that you could be doing more. You could be praying harder, you could go outside more, you could stop listening to the same songs and thinking the same thoughts, but you haven't yet.
So again you find yourself writing at lengths about having nothing to say.

Grey Autumns
You pick up your eight month chip, you are surprised you made it this far, you take a photo of it and keep it in your wallet.
You dream about getting high every night, you thought you would be past the crushing desires and dreams about it, but you aren't
You celebrate a lovely birthday, you start to think that being eighteen won't be so bad, your friends love you more than you thought they did.
You buy more stuffed animals, people give you a number of them, you know you don't need another one but that doesn't matter.
You film videos of yourself talking about your day, you film the heart shaped birthday cake you made yourself, you compile the videos and make a vibrant cover.
You are at the happiest point in your entire life but you still live with a hole in your chest. Both of these things are true and you aren't sure how.
You write often but not as much as you used to.
You don't know what matters to you.
You read from your textbook and answer the preceding questions, you do well but you're still bad at math.
You miss him. You didn't think you were the type of person to miss people, but with him you are.
You got your books printed. You keep them on your nightstand. They stack up high. It makes all the writing you did worth the work. Years of writing on a glowing screen only to hold it in your hands.
You watch every video they upload at least three times, you reread everything they say.
You see and hear things that aren't there. You're taking a higher dose and somehow you've gotten worse. You hear people talking but you can never understand what they are saying, and for that you consider yourself lucky.
You try to give it a place to live, you let this be as real as it is, you listen to the person in the back of your mind.
You love him more than you thought you could. You feel so lucky that he is with you today.
You listen to songs that remind you of the summer before last, you think you are doing better than you were at that time.
The weather is finally cooling down, you sit outside enjoying the cold metal against your arms.
You dress in collared shirts and sweaters, you wear dress pants and sweaters.
You sleep excessively, you are somehow always tired, you have strange dreams every night.
You like your name, even if it is not always yours.
What happened still lives in your mind but it is now carefully tucked away. It doesn't hinder you like it used to.
You feel comforted in a way you can't explain.
You go to AA meetings often. You pray to a god you don't know much about.
You wonder if this time will end up meaning anything.
You say you'll be different but you don't know if you will.

Eight months and two days
You foolishly believed that when you hit six months sober you would have entirely rid yourself of this illness.
You still find yourself having dreams about it almost every night, you miss it, sometimes every day, you wonder how you made it this far without it.
You go to AA meetings most nights of the week, you pray every morning and every night, you tell yourself that you can go without it.
You find it hard to imagine how you ever let it go.
You hate that you changed your brain, you feel like you damned yourself to always chasing the next awful thing that won't fill you.
You wish more than anything that you didn't know how it felt, because now that you know that you will spend your whole life looking for that same feeling.

Mumbled voices
You always deemed yourself fortunate because you know when your eyes and ears are lying to you, and in the moments when you didn't you still held yourself together.
You feel ashamed because there is a large amount of judgment focused towards people like you, you don't know a lot of people who experience the world in the same way you do.
Everything has a grain over it, you can see things glitching and folding in on themselves. Nothing remains still. You wish that things could look normal, just for one day.
You see people and shadows lingering around you, they stand tall and remain still.
Sometimes they upset you, sometimes you feel protected by their presence.
You see hands, some pale, some pitch black, some large, some tiny, they reach for you.
You hear faint sounds that fill the quiet, soft melodies fill the empty space.
You hear people talking but you can never quite understand what they are saying.

Eighteenth birthday party
You bake a cake in the shape of a heart, it looks exactly how you want it to.
You wake up earlier than you normally do, your friend arrives and you enjoy a long car ride into the city.
You laugh and talk, sometimes silence fills the space, but you don't mind.
You walk around a busy thrift store, you buy pearls and crystal beads.
In the next store you buy many stuffed toys, they are soft and some strange looking.
You and your friend enjoy looking through things, you enjoy the space you two share.
You buy random things you don't need, but today that is okay.
Your friend falls asleep on the way home, you almost do as well.
You and them organize the beads and remove the pearls from the string.
You play board games, you swear you're so good at this game that it's basically cheating, you lose.
You force the two friends who just arrived to play Elliot trivia, they know you better than you thought they did.
The gifts are perfect, more perfect than they may have thought.