A Moment of Being Human

*trigger warning, drug use and SA

Entry from my journal

First is the goth girl from middle school, the one who let me stay in her parents house because home wasn’t safe for me. We ended up getting alcohol poisoning together and I left their house in an ambulance, broken face, vomit in my lungs, broken heart.

My blood alcohol level was so high they asked if I was trying to kill myself. I went back to the house that wanted to eat me alive.

The second great love of my life was crystal methamphetamines. She was sparkly and full of life, everything I was not. After a lifetime of trying to find the correct medication, I thought I had found it in her. She made me thin, she made the mundane glitter. She gave me a common ground with my mother - and allowed me to to discover the secrets that lay hidden on the other side of a locked door. No need for sleep, so the nightmares never hit - up so high that nothing could touch me.

The night became the third great love of my life. I preferred the shadows, lingering in dark corners so nobody could see me. The night was a warm blanket that allowed me to feel intimately connected with the world in my solitude.

The next great love of my life was IV heroin and the man who introduced me to it. (Yes, after all this time) I followed him down to the depths of hell, a puppy on his trail. Before he injected me at age 16, I would have been a sophomore in high school if I attended - he said “are you sure you want to be like me?” And there was nothing that I wanted more.

“You want to see crime? I’ll show you real crime.” And I wasn’t privy to the fact that he was revealing what he was doing to me. This man would take videos of him shooting me up as a minor and I thought it was because he loved me. This man would inject me 8 times a day - because he loved me. This man would keep me in a back room shot out, shielded from the world, so nobody could really see what he was doing to me. I lost my mind but that’s okay, there wasn’t much left to lose. I no longer wanted meth and all the roads led back to heroin.

Intention vs impact

Roads leading back to you.

I want to paint clearly

but my hand shakes

I want to reach out to you dearly

but my voice shakes

The scissor of fate

couldn’t cut through the red tie

frayed

but the integrity remains

Love changes shape

when it needs to.

I’ll take this road

Even when it’s unclear

where it leads to

At what point did

romantic inclination

Metamorph into

Ritualistic self-destruction ?

What happens when you meet

your divine mirror

and reflected back is

that same tortured stare.

The facets of yourself

you couldn’t swallow.

You can’t out maneuver

Yourself

The only way out is through

And oh god do I hope

And if you knew the amount of pain and suffering it took to come to that conclusion, your stomach would lurch and your heart would break -

Because for much of my life that was the only thing I held on to.

Hitching my star onto somebody elses. Coregulation. Savior fantasies. Waiting for someone to come through who perhaps would of saved me as a child should they had the chance- dressed up in darkness and toxicity from their own trauma - which I excused them of wholeheartedly.

I have so much to say and I don’t know how to say it. I have 10 movies playing inside of me. Most of them tragedies - maybe a couple indie films.

I have always seen the best in people. I have always been the one who sat next to a fucked up man and saw the sunshine in him. But the worst part was - I truly believed this encounter was a deviation from that pattern. To think I was actually proud of myself…

Historically I’ve dated career criminals and gang members - even my sons dad belonged to that category, although he worked a recovery program and was not active in his prior misdeeds.

So when i fell for you - my twin, my savior, my deepest delusion and biggest break - I was astonished at the growth. Here is a man with a college degree - a counselor, a clinical supervisor - not my type at all - but man did I feel divinity when we sat across from each other. Spilling the secrets of my soul, wondering what it would be like to touch your hand, wondering what terrible misdeeds I had enacted in a different life that found me in the circumstance of knowing you but never being able to love you the way I knew I needed to.

Things changed. I believed that the universe shifted to support this fateful meeting. For the first time in my life, i contemplated what it would be like to wholly give myself to somebody - for the rest of my life. I was never the marriage type - but for you, it played on the back of my eyelids like a dream waiting to unfold. October 4th of last year I told you I was in love with you. You loved me too. And in my childlike naivety I believed that maybe this was going to be the beginning of the happy ending I had long beseeched myself of. Because girls like me- women like me- our life goes one way. We walk the path of woes.

I should of known better.

I looked past all of your red flags. I looked past your actions not matching your words.

Your popping in and out at will, but never showing up when I needed you the most.

I looked past the casual cruelty and indifference, because in between those were pockets of good. High highs and low lows.

I was experiencing the insanity that comes with being half loved and everytime you’d leave or tell me you wanted to be done or didn’t have the capacity or the availability to sit in that space with me I only half believed you because you would come back a few days later, apologetic, broken hearted, saying that you missed me.

And in those moments everything was okay again… I told myself that I loved you unconditionally. And that you were mentally ill and psychologically unwell; you’re doing the best that you can. I told myself that it’s not my job to decide who is worthy of unconditional love, it’s my job to release it from my heart and let it shine out into the world. And so I shined on you. I shined on you. My first thought in the morning, my last one before I go to bed. Occupying the space between my moments.

I had become to realize that a relationship between us would never look how I thought it would, that you would never be able to fulfill my needs. And despite the fact that I could try and accept that, I knew that I would love you forever anyway. There is a pathway in my heart that leads to you. And it’s not all based in delusion, either.

You yourself stated that nobody has ever known you as deeply as I have, in your 47 years. Nobody has ever had as witty of banter with you. We transcend planes of being with our communication and we transcend planes of being with our bodies. These things are irrevocable truths. I can remember you holding my face in your hands, staring into the depths of my soul. When I close my eyes I can see what your eyes look like, staring at me. I could make a list of your shortcomings and of your positive traits, what you bring to this world, analyze it and truly believe that the good outweighs the bad - even if I sometimes cry myself to sleep.

What madness is this. I have probably cried myself to sleep over you more than I have actually fallen asleep next to you and yet I grieve and grieve and grieve at the fact that it will probably not work out. I cry and cry and cry. It feels wrong. It feels like a horrible mistake is being made. I feel paralyzed by the wrongness of it all.

I would of done everything for you.

The mundane things. Learned to keep my room spotless, up to your standard. Worked everyday even on the ones where I’m losing my mind because we need to save money to work toward our monetary goals. I would of cooked for you, danced with you, learned how to read your cues and respected them. I would of raised your daughter with you. I would of watched you get old and taken care of you. I would of given up what’s left of my youth and spent it loving you and it would of been a worthy trade. I would of held space as you cycle through your manic depression and fucking loved you anyway.

Laughed at our inside jokes, explored the secrets of the universe and the human condition, laughed and cried, laughed and cried.

But just because you’re willing to do those things doesn’t mean you get to. All that love, all that power, all those unlived moments and alternate timelines begging to get a chance to come to fruition. All the lives where we met each other and got to be different things to eachother - I am deeply saddened that this one, meeting here again, the story is that of the one who breaks the other.

There is a part of you that loves me. I know there is. I’m an intuitive energy reader, I can feel it, it’s tangible. And yet you are so wrapped up in past hurts, selfishness, crippling anxiety, and the belief that you are not worthy that you cut the branch off the tree before the fruit is born. Being radically loved and taken care of doesn’t fit into your worldview so you hurt any who dare to come to close.

I think perhaps letting me love you would of been too dangerous for you. Caused you to expand past your limits. Or maybe there is something wrong with me that I can’t see. Maybe the age gap makes you feel like accepting my love is taking something away from me. And again I am the child with no say.

And so I say goodbye. Not to you, you will always hold a cherished place. The kind of connection that lingers long past the extinguished flame- tucked away into your DNA.

I say goodbye to my concept of love. It’s been a wild ride, but I cannot survive the flames. I think that perhaps my level of love is akin to madness, just a little bit, and when I get to close I begin to be engulfed and lose sight of myself. Lose sight of what matters outside of my passion. Even this - “the healthiest man I’ve ever loved” has brought me to relapses on self injury and fantasizing about bridges to fling myself off and put an end to it at last.

3.

That’s how many times I’ve gotten so

upset

I’ve reverted back and to slicing open

my own skin

in a desperate attempt

to soothe the disregulation

inside

2.

That’s how many times

I’ve cried myself to sleep this week

trying to delude myself to belief

that your behavior isn’t a reflection

of me

but of some neuropathway

in your brain

long ingrained

making you incapable of love.

or at least the type I need.

I how I wish I didn’t need it

This back and forth dance

You’re hot, and you’re cold.

You love me, then you vanish into thin air. 

Where do you go - when you disappear?

Oh how I wish you could take me there.

But you don’t.

I accommodate

and collaborate

cooperate

myself into little pieces

to make the burden lighter on you.

You love me, but you don’t budge a bit.

Do you even know what love is?

I guess this is why

You shouldn’t meet your heroes.

1.

Is the amount of chances

I’m always willing to give

Because what is love

If not to allow the landscape of your soul to be changed?

And what a powerful catalyst of transformation

Then to be burned

To be pulled to pieces

By the hand of which you adore.

And we’ve discussed the reasons why

Your bipolar disorder, your trauma, your adhd

you’re a poet, you’re a genius, you just need space to be

And theory has it

If I release my grip

You’ll find your way back to me.

And when you come back

with glistening eyes, soft hands, and thin apologies

a portrait of the things I’ve missed

In the flesh, here again, leaning in for a kiss

It’s almost like I’ll forget

The fading cuts on my wrists

And the agony of all of this.