What They Never Tell You Is

The sweet soft air of springtime slides in through my open bedroom window and I sit up to inhale a deep drag of it, hoping secretly it will come inside my body and heal it. All my bad decisions. All the ways I wanted nothing but to obliterate myself entirely. The little tiny kills spread out across a day, an evening which picks at your skin like pock marks on the face, shameful, obvious, but even that doesn’t stop you from the gouging.

Maybe I wanted help as much as I wanted to be left the fuck alone. The little tiny kills that happen and happen and happen and accumulate over a lifetime, only the life is still happening while the time, well, the time is anybody’s guess, except to say it’s moving on with or without you.

Rising from my bed and taking a few steps into the light of morning, I am surrounded by rays of silent sunshine and the glowing flecks of dust which hang suspended in the air like pollen hovering, waiting, static impregnation, it feels alien to be among this brightness. I am remembering what it is to want this. For so long the darkness was the only thing I could trust.

I do not reach for the cigarette which burns in the front of my mind. I swallow gulps of the late March breeze, and water. Lots and lots of water these days. I raise my hand to touch my face, to reach for the drink, to reach for the self-loathing I know and love so much, and stop. Beyond the sickness and the shaking, beyond the bones in the river by the houses lining the bend in the street, there is something heading toward me and I want to welcome it in.

There is something already inside. What they never tell you about is the quiet. They only tell you about the noise, which is easier to deal with because noise is something which has to be dealt with. But the quiet, well, the quiet, it just stays as long as you can stand it. And once it’s got you, you and it are all there is.

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Photo by Darius Marshall