some things I found in my brain

Im trying to find a way to congratulate myself for fighting my way out without also saying that i put myself there in the first place. Well I guess it wasn’t really me, it was my brain. How weird to think that a brain would poison the body it lives in.

I like that, I like thinking that I’m a house, a keeping place for all of my organs. Maybe I wanna be an attic, I know people say that they smell but its just the scents of all the things they hold coming together, all the things that are too special to throw out but serve no practical use. To be an attic may seem like a lonely life, but how could you be lonely when you hold so many stories, so many well-lived lives?

My favorite pen is a blue felt-tip but I dont use it much because it bleeds through the paper, marking anything under it.

I have a tendency to save anything I like for special occasions when i’ll really need it even though these occasions never come.

I used to spend all of my time waiting for you to respond and for some reason this feels related.

Its the waiting I guess that connects the two, im not sure, I guess im probably just drawing lines between two things that were never meant to meet.

I never thought I’d write about addiction,

I never thought I’d know it.

But this is it for sure,

This is it even if the doctors who are supposed to help me define it as a cry for attention. I’m the one who feels it and I am the one who gets to define it.

I feel any sort of pain, and I crave more.

I remember how it feels and I am almost pulled back into it.

I wash the knives after making dinner and begin to crave again. I catch a glimpse of the scissors in a cup with the pencils at work, hear anyone say the word in any context and feel it wash over me, feel it take over my thoughts again.

It’d be so easy to turn my back on recovery, it’d be so easy to run towards everything I’ve been working so hard to resist.

Dear god,

do you know that our world is burning?

do you know that we are fighting for each other's lives?

do you know that we are losing hope, losing our strength and our energy to keep fighting?

Dear god,

I’m asking you to show us some progress,

show us that we are enough to cause some change.

please tell us that we aren’t fighting for nothing, that our screams aren’t going unheard,

please tell us to keep going, keep making noise,

please tell us that we are able to save ourselves, save each other

Dear god,

if you’re really there we need you right now, we need you here,

Im begging you, teach us how to save each other.

Dear god,

Didn’t you build this world? Pour your heart and soul into our breath and our steps

I hope you know that this isn’t something I meant to do to you, I hope you know that this is something that I had to do for me.

I know that it’s changed some things for you too but I know it really hasn’t changed much.

I guess that's why I don't feel guilty, because I knew it would help me so much more than it would ever hurt you.

I shouldn’t feel guilty either way, I remind myself.

I did this for me, I remind myself.

I did this for me so it doesn’t matter that you don’t care, it doesn’t matter that you never did.

I ask all of my friends what they like most about themselves 

and I realize that all of the answers can be separated into two categories, 

either things they can use to protect themselves, 

or things they can give to others. 

I'm not sure what I think about this,

I’m not sure how you could lie like that.

I’m not sure how you could tell me with all that voice, make me believe, and then take it all right back, pack it all up and just leave.

How you could be so present and then just gone? Give me so much and then nothing at all?

I guess you've always been more capable than me.

More able to give, more able to gain.

But I’ve got you on this one, because I am able to grow.

That’s not to say I was wrong, because it’s true, It’s true that I needed you but I'm not ashamed,

I’m not ashamed because I have been taught how to relieve myself of any shame I do not need to hold.

I am not ashamed but instead I am proud. I am so proud that I have been able to leave something that had stopped serving me.

I am proud because god knows it wasn’t easy, no it wasn’t easy, but I did it anyway.

I'm pretty sure you've always been like that, always been some sort of a magnet, always drawing people in, and always good enough to make them want to stay. I'm not sure what that type of energy is called, the one you radiate, but I want to be it. So yellow but so separately blue. Not really nostalgic but some kind of familiar, you radiate a kind of familiar that doesn't spark a memory but promises to paint new ones. I'm not sure what that type of energy is called, the one you radiate, the one with all of the softness but all of the sturdiness, all of the never going anywhere. The energy like windows down in an old volvo you've never driven, like corn fields and fireflies, like so many blushing cheeks and all of the happy hearts to go with them. Have you always been this way? Have you always been able to radiate happy hearts? I think it must've been some sort of family inheritance, something that takes more than one lifetime to achieve.

We think of the heart as this hard thing. This 24/7 iron pumping machine, with his office right next to the room that holds the switch with the power to determine life or death, the heart as the guy on top, the guy yelling at everyone below him to get him to get their act together. But I guess everything I've been describing is either strong or powerful. And maybe that's the point I was trying to make here, that power does not negate softness. Because the heart is ultimately a big softy, trying his best for you, working his life away to provide you with yours. And if you disagree, maybe you need to get coffee with yours sometime, catch-up a little bit, ask him how he's doing (because he doesn't get a lot of that), ask him what he wants in life. Cause I assure you the first thing he'll say is happiness, he wants soft mornings with walks around the block, he wants handholding and giggles from the couch. He wants a porch to sit on to admire the life he's built, he wants to grow old enough to sit on that porch and watch his grandkids catch butterflies in the yard and see how nicely those trees he planted have come along, how big and strong they've gotten, he doesn't want some in-your-face happiness, he's a simple guy really.

How are you? 

How have you been? 

Good, you're doing good and I know it. 

I’m missing you but it’s better now. It’s better for the both of us. 

You’d never say it - but I will, I was weighing you down with all my love, with all of my missing you. 

All of my asking you to care.

How are you? 

Do you ever miss me? Did I give you anything enough to miss?

Do you miss me? Will you ever? 

Will you ever see that it wasn’t just me? Ever notice that you played a part? Ever see that I had To leave?

How are you?

It’s okay that you’re happier now.

All I want is for you to be happy. but I want to be happy with you.

So I guess that's not all I want, I guess I lied.