taste of life’s colors

 

10 months, 11 days sober.  10 days without cigarettes.  i’m going for the trifecta.  turns out quitting smoking is easier than quitting drugs and alcohol, especially when quitting smoking doesn’t end in seizures and rehab.

speaking of rehab, i ‘graduated’ treatment a couple weeks ago.  coining out, as they call it.  twice in the span of one year i’ve done this, once inpatient and once outpatient.  there’s a first for everything.  one of the first actions of self-care i ever did for myself was go to rehab.    i’m playing with the idea of going back down there for alumni day when it comes to my one year.  i never thought i’d be eligible to stand up there with the same people who came to inspire us.

all i know is i don’t want to start the speech with “i was sitting in those seats just like you once”.  i mean, i see how it feels to say that now.  half of it has to do with telling those people they can make it.  the other half is total disbelief.

i actually sat up to do that drawing today.  like, i felt like i wanted to.  it’s still shit to me, but it was good to feel something.  i even wrote some stuff down today.  i’m overdue for a gratitude list.

i put in vacation time for end of july.  that marks my one year.  the boy and i are going away to spend time together, pandemic or not.  we like just relaxing without the need for social interaction so it works out perfectly.  going down to more desolate beaches and staying for a few nights.  hopefully the crowd is just drawn to the boardwalk areas.  i’m okay with staying away from those.

the weather has been beautiful.

i’m glad to be able to notice that for myself.   my mood has been good even if all i have on TV is marathons of investigation discovery.

i’m so close to my money goal and months away from my moving date.  i’ll be living a new life soon.  i can almost taste it.

good things come to those who wait.

 

 

v.

renaissance

a lot of my time used to be taken up by sitting and focusing on how i hadn’t put together the big picture yet. i would stare at the posted images and status updates that would fly by my phone screen in a flurry, all of them detailing some idyllic life of accomplishment or blissful achievement. i would shrink backwards into my pillow, drunkenly scowling and wondering why i, at 30, had nothing to show for it than a mean mug disposition.

this year i turned 31 in rehab. again, not as ideal as i would have hoped. you know something though? i was fucking thankful: thankful i was going to remember my birthday for a change, thankful that i was of sound mind and more than anything thankful that my liver wasn’t failing in a dingy hovel and nest i’d made for myself of strewn belongings.

i went from blackout to back up and i’ve stopped feeling the shame i originally did.since then, i found a way to create with my hands that has started to spark some marie kondo joy, began saving to excuse myself from this hectic state i’ve called home for my entire life and most importantly stopped hating myself for what i hadn’t even given myself the chance to become yet.

sure, if i place that in the grand scheme of shit it would seem menial. but it’s not. i would have never dreamed i’d be anywhere near this state mentally. medicated, stable, loved; all these things i ignored the possibility of being. turns out when i let those lights into my life, shit flipped in a better way.

i used to wake up and burst into tears. check that into a memory box these days. i couldn’t look in a mirror without a grimace, a sigh and a voice of distaste. i trashed the trash talk. i used to hate looking people in the face, smiling or having any sense of wanting to interact with them at all. i respond to strangers in my path of motion and have no issue telling that lady that her dress looks extra slammin’ today. pay it forward.

those nights i spent looking at the lives of other people? turns out deleting access icons from my monitors solved a lot of problems logging in and continuing that destructive shit for me. i haven’t looked back into spying into what i misconstrued as the happy lives of others.

no one’s totally got their shit together.

the mashup of sitting online and trying to piece the puzzle of what others have that i don’t has been a monumental waste of my time. i can’t compare myself to every person that’s walking around with their camera out and facebook on; that’s just not fair. you post what you want people to see, that’s fact. i don’t go posting my shittiest art on the internet; i’m posting my most proud of works and the things i think really put a shine on my style. same goes for people and what they want to show about themselves. no sense in focusing on that as the entire central figure of life.

that’s just not how life rolls.

creating a life and creating art fall into a similar swing : an idea comes to mind, you mull on it a while, you sketch out some possibilities, you destroy some possibilities, you make one try, work on it a little, go for another try, get farther and farther each time, make mistakes, fix them and then eventually you end up with this show-worthy result. you dote on it for a while. others are aware of it. it fades into the background, always there to be remembered and admired. wash, rinse, repeat. sometimes you do art for others, sometimes they don’t like it, sometimes you have to rework it until you both agree. sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t. either way, you’re always able to get a blank slate and roll with it again and again.

the well of creativity is bottomless.

life should the be the same way.i can’t let some artist’s block keep me from painting my own picturesque work. can’t make the art if i don’t give it a go to begin with.

v.

revival

i went to my first NA meeting tonight since coming home from the recovery center.  i enjoyed my time there, even running into someone I hadn’t seen in the last ten years.  there was a swelling warmth in my heart and i was reminded what i got out of sharing and listening to others share.

going to gatherings like that one remind me what i’ve regained from quitting the drinking and drug abuse: feeling.  it’s pretty astounding how you can take feelings for granted once you lose all sense of them; feelings like waking up from a dream and having a moment to reminisce on it instead of battling a violent war of anxiety about the oncoming day, feeling a sense of satisfaction from giving someone else a moment of happiness rather than fulfilling a promise due to shame and guilt from putting it off for so long or even just the feeling of having a string of thoughts that come together to form a clarified idea.  i’m grateful for just being able to exist as a conscious human being.

at some point, the intake of drugs and alcohol became less of a daily enjoyment and more of an enslaving necessity.  i raced myself up my stairs every afternoon after work, arms wildly searching for a bottle to ease the stress of the first i’d grabbed that morning.  my fingers would seek through the darkness in the three A.M. hour to find liquid reprieve to my shaking limbs and rushing thoughts.    i’d slam the prescription bottle against my forehead in the waking hours and ask myself over and over not to put the pills down my throat.

what a waking nightmare.

the vicious cycle of depression, amphetamine abuse and alcohol intake was impossible to escape from without the aid of the rehab.  the meetings allow me take precious minutes to be able to remind myself by sharing with others about where i came from, how things happened for me and where they’ve taken me today.  i’m pretty grateful for that.

it’s been a long journey of reading through older journals, nonchalantly mentioning how i’d choked down 200 mg of adderall and avoided sleeping for three days to get work done to how see the world now.  in the grand scheme of things it’s only been just over 90 days but it feels like 10 years.

i want to feel the next ten years this way.

tomorrow’s another day.

 

 

v.

 

small talk

you are your worst critic

equivalent to all the debates i’ve dominated and fights that i’ve had the best comebacks to — hours after the fact — all in the shower — are the moments i spend dissecting my words after any conversation with another person, like a disgruntled art critic finding the blase nooks of a composition and shaming the artist.

it’s like how i feel when i’m at the supermarket and this self-conscious wave washes over me.  am i doing anything weird? are people looking at me? am i dressed okay? for whatever reason, i’ve had those strange paranoid thoughts.  and why, right? should shit like that even matter?  when your brain is bent like a boomerang, why not?

i hope to use my supermarket deflection technique to help detract from my insecurity: “think back to when you were at the store, kid. do you remember someone you saw there?  did you giggle at them or find something wrong with their every day clothes? did you focus on anyone? tell me one outfit that a person was wearing.  unless they were decked out in costume, odds are you noticed very little about those around you.  and that’s the level to which anyone else is observing you back.”

same thing goes with talking to people.  the things i’m mulling about in my last conversation probably aren’t even registering on that other person’s radar.  i might be thinking, “why’d i say this like that?  that was fucking lame” … i don’t think they’re also sitting there, hours later, on their bed snorting air and saying  “that one sentence out of that whole talk we had sure was stupid.  loser.”

could be a myriad of things.  maybe it’s because the truth was put out there and it surprises us and shakes our insides. maybe it’s embellishment to seem more intriguing and we’re nervous; should we have put it that way? maybe it’s just the struggle with the supermarket — “am i just an awkward thing in existence and does anyone notice that?”

probably not.
put the bat down.

i’ve been practicing my positive affirmations, been spending my time in parks or coffee shops enjoying writing, taken my time running through my morning routine getting ready for the day and not wasting another second in front of the mirror with Bojack Horseman ringing in the back of my head — “you stupid piece of shit”.

the one thing i notice is the lack of the voice, the negative spats, the mental clamor as soon as i open my eyes, the hysterical person trapped inside the glass box beating on the walls trying to tell me something.

i notice the stillness

and it’s good to fill it with whatever i want.

 

 

v.

icarus

deep breaths.

harder, better, faster chick; quick quips of wit on a reckless wreck erect upon reactive revolt. exercising ostracization, organized cessation, suffering sensation. gifted getaway, stored away a force unswayed, diving to depths to ease the obsess, a life laid to rest, unaddressed journey, bloomed in a gurney, turned to fruition postmortem admission. take a step back.

deep breaths.

qualified to be terrified, electrified; left to detest self-arrest, tested through time to reach a  sublime love of a mind that’s only just mine.  fucked off for too long, hopeful throng, familiar song played on repeat and i’m stuck to the seat letting the words just pour over; soft touch to the shoulder, words burn and they smolder and singe, feeling that twinge that gets my legs moving. a pain that brings soothing repast and i’ve cast aside what’s been on for so long.

deep breaths.

time to think twice is what will suffice to find within the din of overcast days i prayed to takeaway what’s left of the past. chastised and sized down, brown eyes burn red, passion unsaid, ready to act on this pact between me and my power, forget the sour days in the maze filled with thick hazy scent, where no turn was right. bright times on the way, swing life away. though may come a change, life is strange, step into the eye.

deep breaths.

 

i’ve been taking a sabbatical — today is called the present because every day is a gift.  i’ve given myself sixty this summer. i’m stretching out in the sun and feel like i’ve absorbed a whole new being, clean and serene but just as obscene. this thursday i travel back north to rev up my life with some fresh introspection. every day might not be a work of art but i’ve painted a pretty picture. cut out the toxicity, replace with productivity. i’m starting from square one.

re-roll; you throw the dice and don’t always roll 20’s. ive been down this beaten path less traveled before; i’ve got a new pair of boots ready to hoof it. no proof of a greener pasture but with stronger stature. i’m feeling tall even on my own, heart, mind and soul gone to hell and back and back on track.  it’s taken some time but i’ve devised a good course of action, climbing out of rock bottoms one trap door at a time.

the worlds just going to have to get used to me.

good morning, i’m coming home.

 

 

v

life can only be understood backwards

”I had a dream that the world was ending a few days ago. What’s up with that?
Seems kind of out-of-place to me.

I feel like I need to be somewhere else and I’m not talking, like, metaphorically, I mean right this exact second in time. Don’t you fucking hate that? Especially when there’s nowhere else to physically be able to go? (Maybe that’s just my problem).

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place and with a different side to it, even.

Not being comfortable in the place you call a home can be a real huge shit on the brain. I don’t mean like, waaah-I-hate-my-life-here-and-want-to-move-out kind of uncomfortable. I mean the kind of uncomfortable where you’re almost literally itching to physically walk out the door and just start driving.

The right-this-second, spur-of-random-feeling, my-head-hurts-and-I-think-I-might-actually-puke-in-my–toilet uncomfortable. The almost-pissed-off-for-no-reason uncomfortable. The nearly total and irreversible bad, bipolar mood uncomfortable.

And that really blows because I’ve lived with other people and never felt this way. At least not anywhere near usually. I don’t even think there’s been a time to record this kind of brain splooge.

(Ding)
(Then it’s gone. As quick as it came. Like nothing ever felt a hair different than before.)”

 

some sketchbook; c.2008

younger, strung out me used to catalogue every thought and event from back then and i’m thankful for that now.  it’s actually reading these that makes me go back into trying to do that again.

reading a lot of things.  things like how my family and i never really did click.  things that sounded similar to things now.

ever look back into your old writing, your sketchbooks or whatever and it’s you who ends up explaining your current life mysteries to you the best?  albeit dramatically, but explanative nonetheless.  really raw reactions and every day normalities that weren’t normalities at all.

augh, gives me the weird shivers

v.