Moss and Mushrooms

Honeymoon

A happy/reflective chapter.
TW: Vomit/purging mentioned

Endless Sunday
I have a sense of elation from deep within myself that is pouring out of me.
I am a fountain of joy that cannot be contained, gray cobblestone covered in moss.
I always wanted this to be the story. I tried to mold the seemingly hardened clay into something different but it never felt like something I held within my hands, until the story became my mornings and days and nights and now I cannot stop telling the story.
Rewriting the week in one hundred different ways. Capturing a weight off of my shoulders, a sense of yellow in my chest, a heart that beats in just the right ways, a person who feels like themselves.
I spent so long in the rain, in the quiet erosion, in suffocating acceptance that this is what it means to be me, one day I would feel the sun warming my skin in a way I had never known.

In my eyes
I remember the photos of diary entries and almost daily exchanges.
You've told me so much about your path, I will hold your hand for every step.
I have told you how proud I am, how strong you are to tell the story and live in what is real even when the world tells you you are made of plastic.
You tell me about your drawings and your music and I am proud. You tell me about your pride flags and plans and I am proud. You tell me that you are choosing to live another day and I wish a little bit more than I did yesterday that you could see yourself in my eyes.
I wish I could give you my pride, I wish I could pull it from my body and put it into yours, I wish you could feel the pride I do for you.

What is the truth
If I were to define the truth in a dictionary of some sort I would write that it is the absence of a lie.
I serve you a cake I made this morning that is pretty and easy but when put on a scale it holds no weight. Handcrafted and intricate, each ingredient building on itself. It is sweet but provides you nothing of substance.
Still, the truth is more than the lack of dishonesty.
What is the truth if everything is always in flux? The sun set last night and rose in the morning. Where is it in the sky today? What about the people who don't live to see the same sun in the same spot you do?
I tell you what I believe and it changes. I tell you about what always has been until it no longer is. I know this until it is removed from me and seems it never really was the full story.
What about the things I see with blurry vision? I see that there are words scribbled somewhere but they are too far away for me to understand what they mean. I know this is not right and I know what made sense before isn't either. I see it just enough to comprehend that I don't see it clearly.
How do you find the truth when you've spent your whole life telling a story? The lies I spoke of so much that I started to believe them. The lies I lived in and the lies I have forgotten about. The lies I fed you and the lies I fed me.
The lies that I existed in. The lies I repeated to myself endlessly. The lies I needed to tell, the lies I wanted to tell, the pointless and aimless ones told with no reason as to why. The lies you believed and the lies you didn't. The lies I spent years painting and thoughtfully adding every stroke.
I am vomiting it all out of me, I am on my knees in the middle of the dimly lit bathroom, I am aching and tired but I am not done yet. I pull my head out of the toilet, sitting up against the wall, I think I'm done now, I think it's all out of me this time, and before I can finish the thought I have quickly rolled back into the purging position.
One does not realize they have consumed too much until they are laying on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night telling themselves that this is a part of it all.
There are moments of quiet I exist in the knowledge that this feels better than it used to. Maybe I will read a lengthy poem in the cold, maybe I will turn on some classical music while I am still awake. Maybe you will talk with me inbetween the bouts of filling an empty house with these sounds.

Write about small things that bring you comfort
I imagine myself telling you I felt that years ago and I have been able to feel unbound relief, I imagine myself sitting at a dinner table with a family of my own, I imagine myself sharing a bed with someone I love and talking about something sunny.
I think of all the ways in which I have experienced these things thus far.
I remember looking back on those poems from suffocating summers, poems written as letters asking myself if life ever becomes breathable, and feeling an overwhelming sense of relief when I realize I found the peace I desperately sought after.
I remember the many months I spent feeling unacceptable until I realized I was loved all along, I remember realizing that you and I have the same secrets ringing in our ears. The moments in which I realized you and I are not so different.
I see myself living in the moment in which I know that I have made it to the end.

Amends
I tell you I regret it, I tell you I have been selfish, and I ask how I can make it better.
I hold my breath waiting for you to monologue about why I am awful, to list everything I've done wrong and how I am lucky you are even talking to me.
You don't say that. She doesn't either. Neither does she. No one does.
You say you forgive me. You say I can make it better by staying on my current path. You say you aren't angry. You ask for something small. You say you are proud of me.
I am not the monster I thought I was.

Silver heart shaped locket
When asked to make my christmas wish list it is the first thing I write.
When my father hands me a small blue box I am overwhelmed with excitement as it is exactly what I asked for.
The tags are the date I got sober and a short song lyric to carry with me.
The back reads "Elliot you are always loved."
I put it on a blue string chair and begin to write on a white grid post-it note.
I try to shrink my handwriting, the letters always too messy and too big, until I am finally able to put the small misshapen rectangles into the locket.
The words read "February and October" in the opening and "Moss and mushrooms" on the left.
I put it on and tell myself I will not take it off, as now I can have my love letters around my neck.