Sketchy

I am in vicious denial over the creeping seasonal mood change. It's way too early! My excitement for fall has been stiffed by my hermit-esque lifestyle coupled with stress from every angle. This stress, this anxiety, this depression is ricocheted back and forth inside my mind, like some crazy light reflecting in a house of mirrors. I am not a suitable candidate for "pulling oneself out of it". I really have very little control over my mental health, contrary to what most people might believe.. My hate receptors are awakened. I spent my summer surrounded by beautiful people, having wonderful experiences and being joyful in the sunshine with the ones I love. No hate, no time for worries or self-doubt. No time to be bothered by gnawing insecurities that scream at me amidst all these beautiful people. I was filled with love and some of that splattered over onto my self-image. I feel like I have set myself up for a fucking disaster when the pink cloud crashes into the muddy earth.

That sad weeping girl inside me is always right when it comes to this stuff. I am delusional. I am not one of the beautiful people! My life is punctuated by periods of oscillating self worth. I am the person consumed by self-hatred six months out of the year. I compare, I hate, I fall short, I agonize, I scrutinize, I hate, I cut, I drink, I hate, I drink, I drink, I drink. And just when I think I couldn't hate myself more, I have a brief moment of exo-perspective and I realize all the people around me that are blackened by my hate for myself.

My self-esteem is a joke and maybe that's for the best though. Masochism and pain are somehow more inspirational and moving than a "healthy" self image. Nothing ever gets accomplished creatively when I actually believe in myself.

***This blog is not open for rebuttal, not a fishing expedition for contradiction***

Ash Wednesday

Snippets of Ash Wednesday

He watched her nearly five minutes frozen and dumbfounded, with his jaunt arms dangling uselessly by his side. With a deep breath, he collapsed into a nearby chair, never taking his eyes off her. It would be over soon; there was nothing he could do to help her. There was never anything he could do to help her. Yet, he felt obligated to watch. He lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly. Scanning the dim room, he found the spoon on the nightstand to her right. She was still breathing and eerily still; her eyes closed and her body languidly splayed across the patchwork comforter. He moved quickly to retrieve the blackened utensil and plopped back down in his seat. Fixing a shot, he was thankful she sent him out to get more. He didn’t see the need for the extra trip then, but she had the money and insisted. He was only gone for a half hour. “There is no way I would know what she took” he reassured himself. “There was no way I could have saved her”. The nightstand was littered with lottery ticket wrappers, an empty dust covered mirror, and a bottle of pills he hadn’t seen before. No label.
After a minute of rooting around callous and collapsed veins in his forearm, he found the sweet spot and pulled back on the plunger. Blood rushed up into the syringe mixing with the tar-colored medicine and with one push, warmth spread through his body. Licking the blood from his arm, he leaned back in the itchy refurbished chair and stared at the bed. She was dead. He felt nothing, but that was to be expected. That was the point.

Poetry

The glorious failure of the beautifully fucked

Beside you - I am dwarfed
limp limbs barely tread water
I resign myself to blissfully drown
in your endless aptness

Ever too timid to put on display
my trivial array of talentless efforts
Keep dancing for me tonight
While I struggle not to fall

Reflections of Youth

Sometimes, it's those longing feeling for the days when I didn't care, days when I didn't stress about life, days when all I needed was ten dollars and a sharp needle. Those days when I was high, gloriously high, dopey and soft, and I thought that I was at the peak of human experience, with my heroin. The simple beauty I found in watching my blood rush up into the syringe, the thrill that was pushing down the trigger and sending my medicine directly into my being, and the pure eroticism of licking the blood off my arm. And the existential glory I realized when I was outside of reality, floating in pure euphoria. Those hazy days when I thought I knew where God was..... in my spoon

Sometimes, I can almost give myself a heart attack when the thoughts of smoking crack interrupt my thoughts. The smell and the sounds of burning rock in a pop bottle, the taste of bitter plastic in my mouth and the inevidable ashes on my teeth, the isolation of being locked in a hotel room with NOTHING! except the endless pursuit of more. MORE MORE MORE. And the dirty, disgusting lengths I would go to just to have MORE, whether I wanted MORE or not - I always needed MORE. I can remember running myself in cirlces, chasing that buzz. When my mind goes there now, it's like throwing a wrench into moving machinery: everything stops! I feel the stress and that anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach and I am thrust right back THERE. Back to that hotel room, back to the ghetto, back to that experience. But I know now, I can never run far enough or fast enough to escape the crack. The crack turns me into a monster. A monster that will always come back once you open that door and show it the light of day. A monster that will destroy everything for MORE

Sometimes, all it will take to put me in one of those awful places is a certain song on the radio. Or a street name where it all used to go down. Or a smell that reminds me of a junkie ex-boyfriend. Or the hours of 5pm - 7pm when I could give you a play by play of what I would be doing a year ago. The running and gunning. The phone calls. The hustle for money and an available dealer. The search for an empty parking lot to shoot. The sense of relief. Or a feeling that I haven't felt in so long because I smothered it with narcotics. I have been forced to re-define everyday life - but sometimes the past sneaks up on my and threatens my very existence with its nostalgia for what was. But my new reality can fight it back; back down into the dark corners of my mind where I know it is lurking, watching my try to stay sober, and waiting for me to be weak so it will have a chance to pull me right back into it