you know who you are.
i should probably bring myself back round to reality, but who knew the existential fear of inevitable death would get in the way this early on? With a splash of vodka on my lips, I stumble back to the cave I have grown to call a home. Am I alone or is there a shadow following me along this hallway that stretches before me with every step I take?
Looking behind, there is nothing; looking forward there is everything. There are bats on the ceiling and crumbs on the floor. There could be another galaxy colliding with ours right now but we wouldn't know because space is called 'space' for a reason - there's a lot of space. There's light years of nothing between our sun and the next sun. What are the chances of survival on a spec of dust hurtling through a vacuum? Zero.
I am lying on the floor and I am staring outwards because my anatomy wont let me stare in any other way. If we could stare inwards, who knows what we could find. A disgusting image of our brain pulsating and squirming as it tries to comprehend the sight of itself fully alive. The brain under a vodka influence? That would be something I'd want to see. Maybe if I tilted my head back enough, my eyes would roll back into my head and I could finally understand the true beauty of my human structure. Oh gosh I'm going to throw up. I want a drink. I want to melt my liver with the bleach-like taste of dry vodka. I want my face to cringe with every gulp I take and I want to cry over every person I could have been and every day I have wasted in this incredibly short human life I have been given. I can feel my stomach churning, desperately trying to find even a micro-centimeter left of food it can use to sedate the alcohol with. I think I've thrown it all up.
One shot at human life. then? Seventy years to meet as many people as I can, to keep the good ones, to fight off the bad ones, to take them on dates and try to keep enough money for myself. Seventy years to cry at everyone's hearts who fail before me, both in heartbreak and in death; to work out what my dreams are and to follow them and succeed; to meet as many aspirations as I can possibly meet; to time travel year by year into the future, never looking back, always looking forward. Seventy years of trying to find myself through the distractions of love and hate and anger and bitterness and bittersweet pain, walking a symphony of emotion from the second I am born to the second I die, with the only things constant being my heartbeat, my breath and the stars. And what am I doing right now? I'm crawling up the stairs which seem to be multiplying in number, just so I can get to my bed and sleep off the hangover preventing me from being able to live. Well I brought it on myself didn't I? I can hardly complain.
My hands are blue and orange and purple and I'm sliding back down step by step. Am I alive? The walls containing me are nothing but swirls of soggy vomit-covered wallpaper and they are reminding me of every time I have choked on my own breath unable to tell someone I like them because I was too scared. I can feel a memory swallowing my ability to move. Just give me a minute and I'll be back. i don't know why i do these things to myself. is it because my heart was once so shattered I'm not sure if I'm going to be okay any time in the future.
several months and a trip to rehab later and i have found the person I have had lost so long ago; myself. my heart is stitched and i haven't smelt alcohol in months. if I learned anything about my time in my own head, I learned what hell was. I found the darkest thoughts and created a reality around them. I was in hell. Hell is real, I still feel it simmering in my bones waiting for my guard to be unaware of the darkness seeping in again hell is a ravenous force hell is broken eyes and walks through cemeteries
It's standing on top of a cliff at the south coast
It's walking through crowds alone
It's that poem you wrote about the boy who got away
It's that time you watched 10 trains pass by without jumping
It's not being allowed to go to a family member's funeral
It's the high expectations set by people who know you're sick but don't care
It's that play list you can't take off repeat
It's watching too many documentaries on people you didn't know exist, but you wish they still existed now
It's being inspired by massacres
It's that photo someone took from the roof of a skyscraper looking down to the street below; that photo that makes you want to jump even though you're not there
It's sitting in a room oblivious to everything that's going on
It's not having feelings, only thoughts
It's not being diagnosed even though you know something is wrong
It's the jokes he made that I can't remember
It's not being able to get the words out
It's all the missed opportunities from not being able to function properly
It's being treated like a child even though you're 16
It's everyone's assumptions of you
It's purging dinner in the bathroom sink at midnight
It's letting everyone down even though you're trying your best
It's wishing to die when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake
It's going to the extent of trying to buy cyanide online
It's being denied the things that make you happy because you're not doing well enough, even though you're trying your best
It's that friend that you almost lost
Maybe Hell is only more common than Heaven when you're sick in the head
t.p.b.
