Moss and Mushrooms

All at once

TW: anxiety, family dysfunction, addiction/substances, depression

Everything
You feel really good, because today you want to do everything, today everything is your favorite thing.
Everything makes you elated, you are overwhelmed with love for the things that surround you.
You want to be so many things, you want to do it all, and for once you feel like you could do it all, that you could be the person you want to be.
It is a relief to feel joy, to feel passion, you feel like yourself.
You laugh, you introduce yourself to people you've never met before, you stay up late.
You write a lot, you write long chapters of poems, you write pages of diary entries, you have so many thoughts in your head.
Your thoughts are going in so many directions, you cannot quiet your mind.
You feel like this is what you should be, excited, productive, elated, this is what you were looking for.
It is somewhat uncomfortable, but what isn't?
Your body cannot remain still, and even if you are not moving you are vibrating a little. You try to lull yourself into calm, but that is not where you find yourself, not today.

1:28 AM
You love her, maybe more than anyone.
She starts telling you about her life and the things she doesn't tell everyone else, the heaviness slips into the conversation, it cuts through everything and leaves you bleeding.
You talk about everything, you talk about how much you hate your family, you talk about how you are endlessly forced to make this less than what it is.
You talk about the lies that left their mouths day in and day out, you talk about how they never seem to let things be how they really are, you talk about how endlessly your life is molded into things it never was before.
You were always the crazy one, the scapegoat, the fallen angel, she was always the one who kept it together, who stayed strong and got A's on her report cards.
The truth is that you were all in pain, you just never felt your pain quietly.
In your perfect family, in your perfect family who can never keep it wrapped up, in your perfect family that is bleeding everywhere.
You talk about how angry you are because they never let it be as bad as it is, they want the happiness to be here more than it ever has been.
They lied to you. They said no more secrets, but how can you trust that? Because every time there were no more secrets something always climbed up from under the carpet, always.
You wonder if they mean to lie to you. You wonder if they would tell you if they didn't have to.
You cannot find the words to express how tired you are of pretending, there are no words in any language that could capture it.
Pretend like he doesn't touch you late at night. Pretend that mom didn't cheat on dad. Pretend that you haven't caused more trouble than most. Pretend that any of this is normal.

In conjunction
You might be the happiest you've ever been. You never saw yourself living as you do now.
You never thought you'd get sober. You never thought you'd write a poem that is both happy and honest. You never thought you'd feel the relief you seem to have found.
You never saw yourself being happy if you weren't high. You thought you were incapable of getting out of the hole. You didn't believe you would ever stop thinking about the things that haunted you.
Until one day it came, until one day you wrote a poem about the sun shining on your skin, until one day you stopped getting high, the relief arrived in a strange and unmarked package.
On the same day you are aching. On the same day you cannot find your peace. On the same day you do not understand how you made it this far without relapsing.
Today you don't know who you trust because everyone is not as they seem. Today you are uncomfortable and uneasy. Today you do not know how to make sense of this.

Amethyst
In this realm it is somehow all true.
You don't know how you made it this many days without putting a bottle to your lips or a line of course to power into your nose. You write love letters to it every day. You miss it more than you ever thought you would miss anything.
You are empty without it. You aren't sure how you will survive without it. You need this. You miss it so much it feels like a part of yourself is gone. You think about it in every passing moment.
You aren't sure how you will make it through today without it, and then you do.
You keep going to meetings. You call your sponsor every day. You feel happy, genuinely happy. You pick up another monthly chip. You chair a few meetings.
You start to love being sober, you don't know who you would be if you weren't. You think you can really pull this off. You like being this way. You want to stay this way.

Passionate ebb and flow
You have always been rather intense.
When you are happy you are elated, when you are happy there is a sun shining from within you.
You have found exactly what you are looking for. You are everything you want to be.
You shake with excitement. You write endlessly about how you have finally arrived. You cannot contain your joy.
When you are low you have had yourself removed from your body. You sink into the dirt. You do nothing and go nowhere.
You are hollow. You are a shell of what you once were. You feel yourself rotting.
You have never known a middle ground, you have never had a mild day, you feel loudly.
You start to believe that this was the way life was intended to be. You don't know what you would be if you weren't deeply emotional. You do not know what life would be like if not intense.

Beloved
You have never felt this way about another person before.
Somehow with him everything you are is okay. Because in your mind you are unacceptable, you are everything you shouldn't be, but to him you are exactly as you should be.
You love to tell him about the little things. You love to hear about the little things. You send him your favorite poems and your playlists. He tells you about his day and the things that are occurring in his life.
He has seen many of your faces, he has seen every person you have been in the past two years.
He is growing in all directions. He is trying to get better every day in a way you endlessly admire.
You feel so lucky that he chose you, that he could have anyone and he wants you. You sometimes don't understand why but you are so grateful that it is this way.
He has remained by your side through all of it. He stayed with you when you relapsed and relapsed and relapsed. He stayed with you when you were unkind and did not want to get better. He stayed with you when you thought you were stuck.
You love the way he dyes his hair every two weeks. You love the way he dresses. You love the way he makes art. You love the way your voice sounds. You love the way he talks to you. You love so many things about him.

8PM meeting
Sometimes you don't know how you are going to go without it, you don't know how you ever went without it.
You walk into the eight pm meeting and you talk to the people there. You talk about your day and you listen to him talk about his. You talk about how long you have been sober.
You read the same papers you do every time, sometimes for a moment your eyes don't move as you read "how it works."
You listen to them share their story. You have more in common than not.
You know everyone in this room understands what it's like. They know what it's like to live with regret. They know what it's like to accept any early grave. They know what it's like to burn yourself into a hollow being because you can't stop.
It's your turn and share and you always say more than you intended to. You talk about your experience, strength, and hope. You talk about where you were and where you are now. You talk about god. You talk about how you made it through today.
When the meeting ends you realize you are better than you were when you came, you realize that this helped you make sense of the senseless.