All the Good Ones Are Taken

Little bits of thoughts flutter about in my head like small birds flittering around in the empty trees. I light up a cigarette and stare into the sunlight which is warm for February. It won’t last but nothing does so there’s no real sense in fretting about it. I think about quitting smoking altogether but I only smoke a handful a week and I’ve quit so much already I feel like I owe myself a break or a vice or a pass or some other such justification which probably adds up mostly just to feeling sorry for myself which may or may not be what got me into my current predicament in the first place. It’s hard to say, right. Did you drink to kill off your fear of inadequacy or did your drinking cause you to feel so hollow that you thought yourself ultimately inadequate.

I’m sure there are experts in this area who could give you a definitive answer but they would surely not be me. Mostly at fifty-two days I feel incredibly lucky and also incredibly high up above a situation I know so little about, looking down at the ground from whence I came, teetering and softly, quietly quite afraid of falling and busting up whatever progress I may have made according to rules I am not so sure I understand let alone agree with abiding by.

When you are very new to taking very proper care of yourself perhaps it makes sense that it would feel mostly good but also mostly wildly disorienting. I spend a lot of time monitoring the contents of my own mind which is fine I guess, I mean I am good at paying attention and I am good at taking notes. Beyond that I think I will just have to let it lie for now. Just don’t check out is the thing, right. Just do not fall into the bottle and leave your newly confused precious self behind.

As I crush the end of my smoke into the clean white ash tray on the patio table, I watch beams of orange light slice across the patches of brownish green grass in the garden. The earth smells wet, mossy, dirty, and alive. I remember the women on the internet whose bodies I envied, whose faces were so harshly fresh it stabbed at each of my nerve endings. I remember the guy at the office who seemed so out of place but had an explanation for everything, even the shit I never asked about. I think of the words of the poets which I found soothing but unable to grasp and the words of the strangers who meant well but clawed straight through to the inside of my still raw veins.

You carve out your life one moment at a time. Knowing some things for certain and others not at all. People will still people at you, and life will still life. And all the while, inside and out, the silence – whether you embrace it or not – persists.