Moss and Mushrooms

September season

A collection written from a happy and cozy time.

October and September
Each day it grows easier to live with, each day you are slowly able to pick up the pieces in a way that is easier to understand than the day before.
Because it was always there, it has always lingered in your consciousness, even before you had the words for it, but now you are able to hold it in your hands, now you can explain it.
Before you wouldn't have known why, before you wouldn't have known how to explain it, you would still be lost in the fog.
For so long you were painfully unaware, unsure of how to make sense of the periods gone missing, unsure how to explain those nights.
When you first uncovered the truth, underneath the years of dust, you didn't want to be this way, more than anything you did not want to be this way.
You would do anything to forget about it, to forget about what you knew about yourself, but you could not remove it from your mind.
When you began to accept it you would only let a finite amount of the truth be present. Maybe I am that way but only until the list gets too long. Maybe I am that way but only if it doesn't contradict what I believe about myself. Maybe I am that way but only if it doesn't disagree what people have told me about myself.
Until one day I stopped fighting, until one day I accepted that I am this way, that I have always been this way, that I am this way for a reason.
It's okay if it contradicts what I once believed about myself. It's fine if it doesn't make sense to me. It is alright if it is confusing and messy and contradicting.
Things came to be what they are for a reason, I am the way I am supposed to be, I am the way I am intended to be.

Time to let go
You have grown accustomed to falling apart every night and gluing yourself back together in the morning.
You write about aching but try not to talk about it too much, you think about the fear you felt on those nights everyday, you listen to songs that remind you of the worst period of the worst period.
Sometimes you don't mean to keep yourself sick, sometimes you don't realize that you're making things harder than they need to be, sometimes it is hard to recognize that you are scared to get better.
Even in the eyes of improvement, even in the moments when you realize you're so much happier than you used to be, part of you doesn't want to let go.
Part of you doesn't want to let go of crying silent tears, part of you doesn't want to let go of your concealed emptiness, part of you does not want to let go of getting high knowing it's going to kill you, part of you does not want to forget what happened.
You admit to yourself that a part of you finds comfort in the rot.
You sit with yourself, you hold yourself tight, because getting better is hard.
It's hard to do something different than what you've always done. It's hard to let go of the stories and fortunes you had for yourself. It's hard to change the way you think.
You remind yourself that there is nothing waiting for you here, you will not find your peace in the same place you lost it.

One day
So much of you and your life feels painfully defined by this.
You want to be more than this, you always have, but it is hard to see your way past the repeat rehab stays and relapses.
You are eight months sober, you have been clean and dry for eight months and you still find yourself thinking about it almost every day.
You think about it when you wake up. You think about it when you go to sleep at night. You think about it in all the moments in between.
Some days you don't know how you will live without it, and then you do, over and over again.
You remind yourself that you have tried so hard and you will keep trying, this doesn't have to be all you are.
There is a path where this kills you, where this sucks you dry until you take your last breath, but maybe that won't be this one.
You go to meetings almost every day. You do almost all the things your sponsor tells you to do. You go to AA events on the weekends. You pray every morning and every night.
Maybe you don't have it now, but one day you will have a day or two where you don't think about it, where you feel untainted by your addiction.
One day you will know a life outside of this.

You were only waiting for this moment to arrive
You'll find what you are looking for.
You will stop thinking about the drugs so much, the happy songs will become your new favorites, you will feel joy at doing the things you always do.
You will write happier poems like you did when you started. You will not fall back onto your old ways. You will have silly dreams that make you laugh.
You will smile with your friends and you will really mean it. You will get more sober chips. You will write diary entries about your amazing day.
You will find your way into not feeling behind. You will really mean the things you say.
You will know in your heart that you have come out of the hole. You will know you made it through the worst.
You will love the little things. You will love the human race. You will believe in a god that made you exactly the way you should be.
You will love the way people smile and dance. You will make sense of it, a little more every day. You will learn to love the parts of yourself that used to confuse you.
You will live to see the end. You will find another hobby you love. You will write more poems. You will become elated at the things you love, things you don't even know of yet. You will be so happy you cannot sit still. You will feel loved. You will feel safe. You will enjoy moments you didn't even know were possible.

With him
With him you felt a closeness you had not known before.
He knew everything about you, he heard your every thought, he saw every one of your faces.
He understood what it was like. He knew what it was like to be an addict before anything else. He knew what it was like for your mind to give up on you.
He trusted you, he told you things he hadn't told anyone before, he cared about you.
At points you felt more known by him than any human being to walk this planet.
He knew awful and ugly things about you, and he still stayed, sometimes you wonder why he did.
He knew what to say, even when he shouldn't have, he somehow always knew what you needed to hear.
For a time you obsessed with him, for a time he was everything to you, but you burnt yourself out of that months ago.
You never ceased to be amazed when he stayed by you, through everything, even things he shouldn't have.
He always read what you wrote, your writing is close to your heart and each thing he said about it made things a little bit easier.