Spare Me (audio)

The light begins to move as leaves of shadow slope sweet against the bare walls of my mellow mind. There is something out there which has its origins inside of my bloodstream. I am so certain of this it aches, but I have yet to find words which even come close to expressing this seemingly impossible phenomenon.

But I can listen to the sky no matter its color. There is a way to become the darkness if you can search yourself for all the reasons you are afraid of the light. Did you know that the universe is mostly darkness? I contemplate the vastness of cold empty space. I imagine myself as a single burning point of distant turning light.

Eventually, it all fades. I run my hands through my hair and stare blankly at its strawberry waves. There is a scent which becomes an alternate reality. It is the beach and the ocean and the way his body wants to stimulate mine. I was a child once and I ran through the fields. I was a feathered creature who could bring messages to the saddest ones of all.

I once read that sobriety would give you everything alcohol promises and I thought that was the most obnoxious thing I’d ever heard. The problem is that it is true. The other problem is that it is all I want to talk about because nobody talks about it because nobody listens. The lies we are sold are so thick it is tough to see through them to the other side. I know only because I have made it here to a place which may or may not be all the way, but which is changing me all the same.

At twenty-one days sober, my mind is crystal clear and even old memories from childhood which I never remembered before are returning to my awareness. It is very surreal. My anxiety has plummeted. Alcohol was causing the anxiety I was trying to cure with alcohol which is the most genius sadistic capitalist trick I never realized I was falling for all these years. You get caught in the cycle because it is designed that way. And people will roll their eyes about all of it. I know because I always did. The problem is that we have no idea what we are capable of. The furious fits of drunk ass rage. The highest heights of sober serenity.

Of course, the truth is that three weeks clean isn’t gonna undo decades of poisoned destruction. I know that. I get that. And a very big part of me is screaming, even as I type these very words, to please just shut up already because “you know you are so full of shit.” The thing is, though, that there is another part of me – small, just a flicker, but very determined for whatever reason to turn into a wild all out blaze – which cannot seem to help but open up its weary throat and speak.