The insanity is alive and well within my tiny little head. Fear bounces off my heart, rebounding within me and touching all the parts that have feeling. I sit and listen and hear what you are saying and relate, relate so well to your words, the look in your eyes, the emotion in your voice. I look to myself, I see the me, the real me, the one that has been hiding in that apartment, behind those walls. I think to what I say and how I mean it, how I truly mean what I say. How I practice what I know, I try so hard to walk that line, not to falter, to be true. But I’m sick, sick just like you and I feel a fraud, a fake, a phony. I make so much about me, I twist all of it into something I can live with. Until I see you, until we meet face to face and I hear what you say and how you talk about me.
You know me as well as I know myself and I’ve needed you so deeply, so truly in me. I wake to your voice like the dead from a grave. Pushing the dirt aside, I’m called to you even when I don’t want to be. I’m slow to get up but once I move, I run to you like child to mother. I just want to be good; I don’t want to cause harm; I want to be the vision that my god has of me. Yet I fall short and it fucking kills me. As minor and small and innocent as I make it, as it might be, it kills me. 19 years gone by and I still make the same mistakes, I am still that addict. I am sick and tired of hurting people, directly, indirectly – I am tired of it. No matter my motives someone always gets hurt, someone always ends up with a black eye and a busted heart. This was never my intention, but my intentions do not save anyone from their own ideas and perceptions, to that I am powerless.
She’s come over twice, we message on and off throughout the day. She has a scent of patchouli oil and nag champa. I am to fond of a note of hippyishness, it speaks to my nature. We talk, her voice soft; you know it trails off in the most delicate manor and pitches up just a bit when she ends sentances at times. Her texts are misworded, she jumbles her speech on occasion. She is light when she walks, I almost can’t hear her coming into the room. We stay behind these screens, evening visits that are really late night stops. We use honesty as the justifier, I try to look past where she is at. We laugh at the reality all the while letting the desire and self-centeredness seep in. I haven’t held a hand in years, I trace hers. Her nails are trimmed, nothing fancy or colorful. She is simple in the most complicated way and her attire so cute. I love the color red. I’ll take her flags and stack them, try and find a way to make them a scarf. I’ll try and find a way to take from her, like I do so elegantly in my self-centered way. She has needs that need to be met, just not by me or you, the needs of lonely nights and sad mornings of a silent house. She needs to be alone.
~
I never knew me till I was alone in recovery, till there was no one there to save me, to console me, to distract me. I used to only meet god in highs and lows cause my momentary consciousness was always in self or someone else. Alone in recovery gave birth to a new version of self, alone in recovery demand’s a parlay with a higher power, alone in recovery shapes you. You get to find all these other magical ways to cause harm too self - ego, finances, sex, gambling and so on. All these pretty little defects changing the way you feel, distracting you from self, from a spiritual path. They would tell me this for years and for years I denied it to only find its truth. Altho this is just my experience and not the experience of everyone.
I think of who I am, who you think I am and of course I think you see me as something brilliant, ego has a way of doing that. I see this cuz I count the accolades and round up from there, next thing you know I have become something special. I will cherish this thought for a moment, it wasn’t long ago where I thought you thought the worse of me and you probly did. It wasn’t long ago where my character defects were on display for all to see and judge. I became an example and that was fine. I learned so much from my misgivings, no matter how painful it was to look at me there was a bonus to it all… So yeah, you see me in golden light, draped in silk and spiritual holiness.
I can be so good and fall short by just one step and then I become all that is ugly, all my good nature is washed away with the disgust of self. I become what I dread, I become everything you knew me to be. I trap my self deeper in this apartment, deeper in self-obsession, fearing your judgments. Cuz really I just want to be good and accepted by you and all those around me, but if you found out my truth, who I am in tiny moments that I can’t take back, you probly wouldn’t accept me. You’ll see only the shortcoming and not the months of right living and right doing. You’ll cast me to a spit and roast me in little circles, teeny tiny conversations that echo in the parking lots and bounce off the walls of monotony and you do this cause you sit above me. There you are on your perch, quibbling about the lower lives you look down upon, judging me by my clean time and past digression’s…
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Isn’t it remarkable the way the mind works, the way this disease work’s. In one paragraph I am being comical and backhandedly boisterous about how luxurious I am and in the next paragraph I am judging and condemning myself. Isn’t that how we do it though? We go “oh yeah that’s a good dude and the next it’s like oh naw he’s all bad”. Even if we only have that thought for ½ a day or only spout it in 2 conversations, we are still in judgement. And isn’t it a trip that those of us who have been called to the carpet, those of us who live in glass houses are able to not pass that judgement, who are humble and live parallel lives with all those around us. All this thought cuz I’ve been living in a reoccurring character defects, defects that have reared themselves throughout my life. They don’t ever truly go away, they just go into remission, most times to come back, coming back whole and on steroids or in some resemblance to their original form. Character defects are like the moral hepatitis B, gone but still in you waiting to come back.
I give it a week or two, work on change and then sweep all this under the rug, I let it all go. Self (ego) cannot live in this train of thought for too long, self needs to be happy and wants everything the way it wants it. Eventually I will slide my way back into another character defect, into another position that brings forth some type of self-loathing or sadness. I will think I am helping, only to be harming, I will think I am being selfless only to be self-centered. This is my cycle. The time in between these shortcomings becomes vaster the longer I am clean, well most times.
I wish I knew complete peace within, that I didn’t think or question, that I accepted all realities that have been set before me – no matter what they are. But I do not, my want’s, needs and desires control and contort, my ego seizes the moment. Obsession and compulsion kick in and fear takes me from spiritual consciousness. It’s a daily maintenance to survive what goes on between my ears and I’m ok with that, it’s in non-acceptance and aggression towards change is what creates the suffering of the moment. It seems all I have to do is surrender with acceptance and come back to center. I will make mistakes, I will hurt people, I will fall short – no matter my motives this will happen. I will be ugly and selfish and manipulative, yet all the while trying my hardest to not be. This is just life and I am not the things I do.
Namaste 🙏🏻
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