A List of Beliefs for No Real Reason.

I believe in being honest. Through your actions, words, and thoughts. Clarity and acceptance of the situation around you, and yourself. I believe shame is healthy and pride only in small doses. Humility and self analysis is just as important to the idea of honesty as not directly lying.

I believe it is okay to be proud of where you came from, though it is equally important to understand it is no more different or special than anywhere else. I believe facts should build pride and nostalgia is poison.

I believe you need destruction to grow. I believe you must pick yourself apart and discover your cancers in order to eradicate them and build yourself stronger. A lack of destruction stagnates growth. Ask any forest. This is impossible without real honesty. Everything comes back to honesty.

I believe in love as a magic in the world and I also believe in love as a full time career. Glamour fades and in youth we shy from the terrible work of maintaining love, despite it's long term value to our happiness and satisfaction. However, you need growth and of course honesty.

I believe there is no truth worth knowing. I have never been satisfied or pleased in any sense discovering truth.

I believe the bottom is a real place inside all of us and it requires more bravery to reach it than to get better. I believe in the strength of suicide and self destruction. I believe that those who call suicides cowards do not occupy the same emotional or spiritual spectrum. Further, that those who condemn suicides are slightly subhuman.

I believe that learning yourself should be a constant wheel turning inside you. Always questioning, always searching. I believe that once you stop and you "know" who you are, you become quicker to fail to see other perspectives, as well as failing to understand new emotions or struggles within yourself.

I believe that without authoritarian systems in place humans would continue to co-operate and grow, and that maintaining these systems only holds people back.

I believe disposable people exist and I believe most of us are among them. I believe we are bred to feed a minute portion of the population and I believe that if you don't see it, you deserve to be eaten by that minute portion.

I believe people who reach adulthood without passions are not real. I believe that I have loved many of them and that breaks my heart, because I'm not sure they were ever capable of loving in return.

I believe art is the pinnacle of human potential. The ability to express a knot of emotions within yourself and have it understood and felt within another living thing across centuries and continents is vastly more important to the human experience than any achievement of science, religion, or industry.

I believe that science is the closest second. I believe understanding the world around us separates us from the other animals, though it is a divide we must remember to balance carefully. Understanding nature matters, but removing ourselves from it is a slow death.

I believe in possibility. I believe we are possibly a sum of chance, or design. I believe we may be alone. I believe we may not be alone. I do not believe in a god, but I believe one or many to be possible. That is the first time I have let go of my staunch atheism in almost thirty years. Honesty.

I believe in holding doors. Smiling at strangers. I believe in lending a hand. I believe in being kind, despite the day you are having. Not for reward, not for recognition, but for the sake of others. I believe true selflessness should be among the goals of all of us, and if I were to be asked for the meaning of life, I would answer with that.

I believe in listening. Understanding, or at least attempting to. Letting go of ego, and becoming vulnerable for the sake of another. I believe it is often painful, however the end result of peace and serenity often makes up for it.

I believe sometimes, you just have to get something out, even if it isn't what you set out to say.

Awake, for Better or Worse

The room is dark and the fan is on. My eyes ache and Elle is a few inches or maybe miles from me. The room is dark and the fan is on and my hands are shaking and my blood is crashing through my veins and brain and heart and my lungs struggle to pull in


any






thing.





Panic. A static and stomping fills my ears and thoughts. I am scared. Paralyzed. Images of my body. Images of my mistakes. Echoes and ghosts and futures and the past. The fucking past seared into my face and every time you look at me isn't it all you see? Isn't it all I can see anyway?

Face after face after face, all lost. Eroded away by the constant tectonic alcoholic. The head of household. The good man. The hope and then, of course, the truth of it all.

It takes a half hour to pull myself together enough to get out of bed. To look at the shape of Elle under the blanket, sleeping it off. Breathing slow and steady, at peace. The things I've said. Done. Been. It's all I feel anymore and when I stopped drinking it came flooding in and I couldn't hide. I spent weeks at the edge. Making up for lost time, I imagined, and if I could only make peace with it, with it all but



why should I get off that easy?




Don't I deserve each moment like this? Each moment I have attacked you all with? Why should I accept it and move forward? No, I deserve this. This and more.

The shape of Elle under the blanket. Peaceful. Here because she loves me or here because we came here alone and together and I deserve that uncertainty. That paranoia. It will never matter what she says or does, I deserve to feel like I have to fight for her.

I stand and walk through the dark and I try not to choke against my collapsing lungs or let the dizziness take me to the floor and I reach the wall and lean and take my notebook from my backpack near it and go into the bathroom. I sit in the bathtub and I can choke there. I do.


Choke. Rest my head against the wall and let it all wash through me and over me.


I've been taking melatonin again. Nearly nightly and I took two last night and slept restlessly and I took two tonight and it is now almost five and I am drowning in panic. I have been here so often in the past and I know soon I'll be drinking Nyquil by the bottle and soon I'll be back on the fucking Seroquel that hollowed me out but I slept. I slept well and my real self didn't wake up then until I took myself off.

My breathing slows and I count my fingers slow against my thumbs.


One, two, three, four.


Four, three, two, one. Over and over.


This isn't even the worst part of sobering up. It's not facing what you've done. Or making amends. Or making the change completely. It isn't the way your chemistry reacts without alcohol. No.


It's realizing that so many parts of me weren't created by alcohol. They were just me. The panic. The rage. The sadness. The paranoia. I'm quick to react, judge, damn. I can be mean to people I love without a second thought. I can be cold and cruel for no other reason than because I am capable of it.

I forgot all of that shit lived in me and in the decade I was an alcoholic and the half decade before it that I was building steadily up to it, I forgot that those were parts of me.

I forgot that I was awful.

Always this picture of a good man that Elle had never met. Had been buried under a disease. A good man that was still somewhere if I could only pick him out slow and carefully.

I had forgotten what I was. What I am.

I sit in the bathtub and count my fingers and control my breaths and I can feel my heart slow eventually and I stand and take two more melatonin and wash it down drinking from the faucet. My face in the mirror. Red and swollen and the fucking past seared into it and I wonder if I have ever been happy, like I remember I was. I wonder if any of the light ever really shone and I wonder if I was so fucking happy before, why'd I drink so much?

Why'd I quit?


In the mirror he tries to feed my argument but I know why.

For Elle. For hope. For my family, and for me. The me I thought I was and the me I want to be again, for the first time.


A few more deep breaths.


Another drink of water.


Another farewell to the scarred and swollen reflection and I walk into the dark bedroom where Elle hasn't stirred and I slide in next to her, ashamed and in love and awake, for better or worse.

New Orleans

In New Orleans I took my last drink. 

Fitting, I suppose.

Elle and I rolled into town sometime on a Tuesday morning. The car groaning and burning and keeping its head held high. Missed turns, rerouted, eventually parked somewhere in the French Quarter. 

We had driven from Mobile, Alabama straight there, in broken A.C. and a useless stereo and hungry, cramped from sleeping in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart for the sixth or seventh time. The GPS told us turn, but there was no road. The GPS told us we took the wrong turn, but we hadn't turned. We spoke in quick and pointed bursts, hot and agitated. The car, in better shape than us.

We were three hours early to check into the Air BnB. The uneven and broken roads, the canyon of painted and collapsing corpses lining them, all held the heat bouncing and burning and I hid in the shade of someone's garbage cans while Elle looked herself over before getting out of the car. 

Stink of the garbage, stink of the town. From my hole I could see the wrought iron railings on the buildings second stories. The hand-painted signs of bars and restaurants and art galleries. The decay eating away at all of it and my image of New Orleans was dead. 

"What a shithole," I mumbled to Elle, who was now out of the car and adjusting her fanny-pack. 

"Well, you're literally in garbage right now. What do you expect?"

"It's hot."

"Come on, let's find a drink somewhere. Maybe some food."

Elle had been here a few months back and though she hadn't had a spectacular time then, she had had a good time, and was vaguely eager to show me why. 

I stood from my garbage hole and brushed dirt off of my shorts and I was already slick with sweat. "Okay."

Into the quarter and nothing was really operational yet, people still opening and we ended up just walking around the block, melting slow into our shoes. The car came back to us and it was heavy on one side.

"Fuck."

"What?" Elle asked.

I walked quicker and sure as shit, a flat. The second of our trip. Beyond that, the tire was ripped open. Cut. 

I don't mind a flat tire when it is my fault. No, that's a lie. I do. I mind it less though than when some drunk New Orleans fuck decides to slice it up. At ten in the morning. In ninety-five degree heat and the argil fucking humidity.

We had $178 dollars between us, eleven days left of this trip, and a few hundred miles to go still. 

"Motherfucker."

"Fuck!" Elle said. "What the fuck?! What..." She looked around, as if to spot Spring Heeled Jack dancing gleefully off over the rooftops but he remained elusive as ever. "Fuck! We were gone ten fucking minutes!"

"Honey, calm down."

"What are we supposed to do now? How are we going to pay for this? Do we call the cops? Is there a fucking point?!"

"We'll figure it out. We always do. It's fine."

"No. No, James, it's not fucking 'fine'. We were here ten fucking minutes! We have no money!"

"Just... calm down honey. Listen to me. Call triple A."

"And say what? Someone slashed our tires come rescue us?"

"Yeah. Sure. That works. Start there. We have enough to pay for it if we have to. We will just have to rough it until Texas. Lay low."

"Rough it? We have nothing. We've been camping in fucking parking lots. We shower in gyms. How much rougher..."

"Honey. Stop. Calm down. That isn't helping. Focus. We can do this. This isn't anything. We have a problem, we have the means to fix it."

"Stop telling me to calm down. How are we going to get to Texas if we have to pay for a new tire?"

"If we do, it will be like eighty bucks. We have that and more. We have food in the car. We have water. We have blankets. Everything else can go to gas. We will make it."

She stared at the tire and took her phone out. Called AAA.

I walked around the car. Inspected what I could. Just the one tire. I knew we didn't have enough to make it the rest of the way. Busking was an option, begging was an option, but neither were guarantees and begging was only insult to injury. 

My phone vibrated.

My mother.

"Hey mom."

"Hi bud. How's the trip?"

I began to lie. Everything's great. So good. Unbelievable. 

"No, really, how are things?"

"Well..." I filled her in. Hung my head. 

"How much money do you have?" she asked. I told her.

"Where is a Western Union?" I looked it up and told her.

"I'll let you know when I can get you some help." I thanked her. Serendipity. A good parent. A good person.

Elle was done with her call and now watching me. "Who was that?"

"My mother."

"What'd she say?"

"She's going to send money tonight I think. She said she'd let me know."

"Thank god. Tell her I said thank you." Elle's tone, her entire energy slowed and she came to me and hugged me. "I'm sorry I blew up a little." 

"It's okay, I get it honey. What did triple A say?"

"They're sending a truck. The tire isn't covered but they'll get us to a garage if we need to, but I remembered when I was on the phone that we have the donut in the back."

"Can't get to Texas on a donut."

"True. But we could get to a shop if need be."

"I can't change it here. The road is too uneven." It was, where the car was parked the road dipped in deep ruts and a few years back I had almost lost a few fingers from a falling car and wasn't looking forward to doing it again.

We waited. Nearly silent. Sweating. Two hours passed.

The truck AAA sent turned out to be a guy in a van and he had us pull the car into the flattest section of road,, shredding the tire between the rim and the pavement. Threw the donut on, said "Yep, someone cut it. Animals out here." and drove off.

Drove to Wal-Mart. 

Waited. One hour.

New tire.

$83.

Hungry, but we decided to wait until we checked into our room and eat there from our supply.

Welcome to New Orleans.

Our Air BnB was in the seventh ward. Not a safe area by any means, but not the worst. Luckily, over the trip, the car had formed it's own intimidating personality and we weren't worried about it. We checked in, showered, ate, and my mother messaged me that the money should be available.

"Thank you," I said.

"Of course. I love you. Be safe."

I hung up and we went into town.

The French Quarter, in the evening was slightly more seductive than the day. I assumed because I could see neon, people had hope in their eyes, and you couldn't see the rotting houses. We walked the blocks to the Western Union and picked up the money. I thanked the cashier and bought a water and we headed into the evening.

"I don't want to be out long. I'm not feeling that well."

"Okay, we can do the New Orleans night thing tomorrow if that's cool."

"Sure, honey."

We had a drink and went back to the Air BnB. Nothing else worth mentioning happened that night.

In the morning, waking in a soft and engulfing bed. Stretched out. Air conditioning. I shit on people who refuse to live on the bare minimum, but I did miss luxury in the moments I had it.

Elle made coffee and oatmeal and we sat on the edge of the bed and ate and woke slow into the promise of the day. I was looking forward to drinking. To exploring and running around town with Elle and getting into trouble and the normal routine. We didn't have a lot of money, but I had a way of acquiring alcohol with almost nothing.

"What do you want to do today?" She asked.

"Whatever you'd like. I just want to hit the town this evening."

"Well, if you want, let's get dressed and go hit the bodega around the corner. See what they have and maybe walk into the Quarter and explore a bit."

"Sounds good."

We showered again. Dressed.

The temperature was already in the high nineties and it wasn't noon yet. I was in pants and regretted it. Elle stopped often to take photos of various street art. It had been a while since she had taken a photo of me, and I couldn't remember the last time she did, and I put the thought out of my head.

The bodega was mostly Mexican, the best kind of bodega, and I bought a six pack and a water and we went outside.

"Want one?" I asked.

"Maybe in a bit. Still early for me."

I opened one and put the rest in my backpack and we walked toward the Quarter through a somehow worse neighborhood than we had seen yet. Boarded doors and windows. Bars. houses missing walls even though people clearly lived in them. Vagrants under overpasses and between buildings and anywhere the sun wouldn't poison them. I kept my hand on my knife and close to Elle and quiet I recommended she do the same.

In the Quarter I was already drenched in sweat and opened another beer. We walked for a bit and when we were hungry we stopped in a bar that featured sculptures from one of Elles favorite artists. Large pastel cake-like sculptures with animal teeth. I didn't know how I felt about them. The skill was impressive but the message lacked and seemed tired of being repeated over the last fifty years. Buzz-art.

We had pizza and beer and were on our way. The hours melted under the sun and a clever beggar got me for five bucks, inadvertently damning all other beggars in New Orleans from even getting eye contact from me. More drinks. More bars. More art galleries. Some impressive and beautiful, others lacking in many ways.

As evening spread over the town, I couldn't shake the idea of why Elle hadn't taken any pictures of me on our trip. Or liked any of my shit on social media. Or spoken to me without being spoken to. I knew I was drunk and I knew my brain was exaggerating a number of aspects, but I couldn't gwet out of the tailspin.

"What's up, you?" I asked.

"What do you mean?"

"You're quiet. You aren't really speaking to me."

"I am right now."

"Only because I asked."

"Nothing. I'm fine."

"No. That isn't true."

"Okay. Tell me how I feel."

"I don't know. That's why I am asking."

"What do you want me to say?"

"What is on your mind."

"Christ. Nothing. Are you sure something isn't on your mind?"

"Yeah, of course. A lot of shit."

"Oh, so that's what this was about. I'm bait."

"No. You are quiet. I just wanted to see what was up," I said.

"Oh, sure. Because you have something you want to yell at me for."

"What?"

"Nothing. You only ever want to talk to yell at me about something."

"What...? What are you talking about?"

"Come on. Spit it out. What did I do now?"

"Wow. Forget it."

"No. You wanted to talk, we're talking. What did I do to piss you off?"

"Have you taken any pictures of me on our trip?"

She was silent.

"Why?" she asked.

"I just... this is a big thing for us, and I assumed you'd want memories of it, but all I have seen you post is street art and shit. Like I'm not even with you. Even on like, Facebook and shit, you haven't liked anything of mine since the end of July. Like a month ago."

"Jesus Christ. You're pissed about getting likes?"

"What? No. That isn't what I'm saying at all." I sat down on the sidewalk. "It just feels like you don't want anyone to know I am with you."

"Everyone knows you're with me. What's the fucking problem?"

"I don't know. A couple months ago, when I was in Florida, you were upset because I didn't interact with your stuff enough, it made you feel unwanted, so I made sure I did."

"I don't remember that."

"It's in our chat history. I can show you."

"Yeah I bet you have screenshots of everything. No, I don't want to see it. You're being over sensitive. Knock it off and let's just get this over with."

"Get what over with?"

"I don't know," she said. "This night, this stupid fucking fight you decided to have."

"It's not a fight, I just asked you a question, and you're kind of making me feel like shit about it."

"Well it's a stupid question. I'm not fighting about likes."

"Again, it isn't about likes."

"Yeah, it is. And you know it."

"No. Please listen to what I am saying. It is about feeling unwanted."

"I'm done talking about this. Can we please go?"

I looked up at her. My chest drained and I felt defeated.

People passed us and when they were gone Elle bent down and hugged me. "I love you. I want you. This is in your head. you're just drunk."

Hearing it was a warmth in me, and I believed her.

I stood and she hugged me again.

We went to another bar.

A few hours passed and people bought us whiskey, my Hyde-switch, and beer and more and more and I remember very little after this, save for;

Screaming at Elle, walking back to the room. Calling her a liar. Calling her a cunt. Picking apart her argument both surgically and recklessly. I remember her screaming back at me. I remember finding another bar. I remember telling her I was going in and she could fucking walk home. I remember seeing her ask the bartender to call a cab. I remember drinking more and finding my way back.

She was sitting on the porch.

She couldn't get in. We yelled in the street and eventually I kicked open the door and told her I was leaving. Told her she was a liar and I knew I didn't mean shit to her and that she was a cunt and I didn't give a shit what happened to her. I went upstairs and threw a bunch of my shit in my suitcase and told her I was getting the rest of my shit out of the car. She said she wouldn't unlock it and I just needed to go to bed.

More yelling. More screaming. More crying.

"I hope you rot and die!" she screamed and I remember that every day, just as I know she remembers each terrible thing I said.

I went to the car, loudly in the dark and it was locked.

"Open the fucking car or I'm kicking in the goddamned windows!"

She was at the door watching and I threw my suitcase down and began kicking the windows over and over and she yelled and came running out and unlocked it and she was crying and screaming and I ripped the door open. I began grabbing my shit and throwing everything else into the street. Blankets. Clothes. Our food. Our dishes. Books. Her clothes.

I opened the trunk. Repeat. She screamed at me and I told her I couldn't fucking believe her and more names and more screaming and I walked into the dark neighborhood.

I found a closed gas station and set my bags and guitar down on the stoop. Laid down and closed my eyes. I had enough money for a bus ticket or I would just kill myself in New Orleans. I didn't give a shit at all. The argument about feeling unwanted smashed and exploded inside me. The evasive answers. The excuses. I couldn't stop hearing it.

She called and told me to come back. To get sleep.

"Fuck you!" I yelled. "You did this!"

Repeat.

I nodded off occasionally but didn't sleep.

I called her. I told her we were over.

Dawn crept slow into the city and I sat on the stoop in the growing heat. Still drunk and I gave my last beer to a homeless man who had decided to sit and tell me everything would be okay. That he'd seen worse. That at least I was still alive. That maybe she didn't love me, but someone could someday.

He went into the store and a few minutes later came back out with a tallboy and handed it to me. I sat on the stoop with a rotating cast of homeless and drank and around noon Elle drove up and I got in and we didn't speak for hours, until we were almost out of Louisiana.

After a decade, I had hit the bottom. The black had swallowed me and I was a violent, screaming, drunken monster and whether or not Elle would forgive me, she didn't deserve that. Or anything even close to it. As we drove I understood her distance. I would have been too. This was the worst outburst of mine, but not by that much.

That tallboy on that stoop, in a small crowd of New Orleans homeless, was my last drink.

It was time to heal. For me. For Elle. She may not love me, I thought, but someone, someday could. And they didn't deserve it either.

We crossed into Texas, both crying silently to ourselves.

Nothing, in a Pool

We'd been on the road for nearly two weeks.

Elle and I.

Not long, in terms of how long I dreamed to be aimless, wandering, learning, discovering. This country. This world. This person.

I had always had my eyes and heart set firmly on the sunset. A life built around the goodbye. The end credits. The smile, nod, kiss, warmth. At this point, though I had sacrificed more than I cared to admit, though I had seen my close and dear friends for possibly the last time in our lives, this was not the curtain call. This was not 'to be continued'. Not yet. 

Elle and I were in bed, in air conditioning, in a motel room in Charleston, South Carolina. I had a terrible sunburn from the day before and our tire had blown out earlier in the day. The day before a forest had made clear it wanted to be alone and we left it alone. The south, in august, was not our best move, strategically. We were sat in bed, in a motel room, in air conditioning, drinking PBR and had been in a pool shortly before.

Night, well after pool closing though the night manager had told us he'd leave the pool open because he had had enough of this day and we had also and we thanked him, and found ourselves in the pool, staring at the stars and planes from the nearby airport and the palm trees and air and I said to Elle; "We could say we are in Los Angeles right now. It looks the same."

She nodded and agreed.

"But, we'll be there soon enough. A year maybe. I'd like to be there in a year. There are things I want to do there."

"Oh yeah?" she asked. "Like what?" Elle was sat on the stairs in the pool, in the water up to her waist and after such a long, trying, and hot day, she was beautiful and it was easy to forget the nails of the day, the stress of the moments, the sunburns, burst tires, and warning owls when I looked at her. It was hard to be angry when I was near her.

"I don't know. I want to feel California. All of the Californias."

"Californias?"

"Yeah," I dipped under the water and floated a bit, staring at the bottom of the pool through a pair of goggles I had found earlier and kept imagining myself as Fran Kranz on the poster for that movie I liked. "I want to audition for commercials in L.A., for one."

"Have you ever auditioned for anything before?"

"Nope. I just want to do it. I want to be in a hallway with thirty people all dressed the same. Muttering the same words over and over, in chorus but also static. I think it'd be a really surreal moment."

She drank from her PBR and smiled. "I think you could do really well."

"I think it'd be fun. But, also, the other Californias. Like... Mid-California. I don't know, work a weed farm, or something. Live in the forest and hunt Sasquatch."

She nodded and rolled her eyes playfully. I swam closer to her and laid my head on her thigh. "I could go be a sasquatch. Live in the woods and hunt apples."

"Do they like apples?"

"Yes."

"You'd be a good sasquatch, then." she stroked my hair and a plane careened to the south above us and I thought it was the most beautiful moment in my life in well over a year and I kissed her thigh and swam out.

"You could be my sasquatch squaw. My Sasquaw," I said.

"Oh, like queen of the sasquatches?"

I spit a small fountain of water. "Yep."

She put her hands on her hips and with a regal sense looked to the sky. "Do you think the other sasquatch would  respect me?"

"Sasquatches, or sasquatch?"

"Sasquatch, like moose."

"Oh. Then yes."

"I'll find the reddest, most delicious, plump apples, and deliver them swiftly and bountifully through the kingdom."

I smiled at her. She continued her daydream gaze to the sky and I smiled at her. 

I dipped again below the water and thought it was the most beautiful moment in my life in well over a year.

I smiled under the water.

I smiled and felt good.

Momentarily Happy

I want to write. Tell you. Show you.

Here I am. 

The sun. The heat.

Here I am, Florida.

Here I am.

There you are.

I will see you soon.

I will see you soon and we will be happy and I will be fixed and I will be right.

Here I am. Drinking, alone. 

Regretful. Momentarily happy.

I'll let you know when I am better.

I'll call you back.

when I can be better.

while the days pass.

the years.

o Love

o Love

and you were there

o Love



o Love

raw and scathing, relentless and arterial

o Love, alive.



Good and

Never bad, right? Right?

o Love






o Love







o Love

Small memory, blind memory

o Love


o Love

o K

You win


o Love

you win.




Love



tired and constant.


o love





o







love.









hello again.




he said.





forever.

A Brief Expression of Gratitude

At no point have I forgotten that I am both loved and lucky.

At no point have I been ungrateful. Thankless.

I am blessed with physical health. Beauty. Ability, and most importantly, people who love me as I am.




I am more burden than I am worth, yet there you are.


At the drop of a hat.


At the buzz of a phone.


You've saved me.







If I do anything else with this life, let it be repaying you. Not out of a sense of debt, but only so you know I love you as much as you've made me feel loved, safe.

the Wait

The empty stare.

World unseen.

Only the constant hum and weight of absence. Regret.

A thought of autumn and then autumn.

More days.

Hours. All the same.

Winter.

Spring.

Creeping and hollow summer and the empty stare.

Waiting out the clock.

Cut off the frostbitten fingers and hope the hand can be saved.

Hope the hand can be saved.

The empty stare and the weight of absence.

The mirror and hide my face in the beard. Under the sunglasses.

Every love on the television.

Every loss.

They all belong to me.

They all wear your face.

Cut off the frostbitten hand and hope the arm can be saved.

More days.

More hours.

Each grinding minute at the base of my skull.

Keeps me awake and my eyes hurt.

Lay in the dark.

My skin sweats and itches against the sheet and I shift in the bed and my brain is on fire.

Spinning. Tumbling off in the night.

My throat is tight and my eyes burn and the constant hum and weight of absence. Regret.

The morning light and get out of bed.

My eyes burn.

The mirror.

The empty stare.

More days.

More hours.

They all wear your face.

Home Keys and Stimuli: Suicide

I tried unsuccessfully to kill myself four times in the last year.


A few celebrities have found more success (as celebrities do) recently, and the topic has come up more than it used to.




More attention.


More "sympathy".


More "love".



Roll my eyes.




I'm glad more celebrities are killing themselves.



Not necessarily that people are getting to the point that they see no escape beyond death, but that people with influence are screaming out



HEY THIS IS A FUCKING PROBLEM



THIS WORLD




THIS LIFE




I don't know every reason. I don't pretend to understand.


I have nothing but empathy for these people, because, at the end of the day, they're people. You, me, them. People. But, I do understand influence. In 2016 there were 44,965 suicides. 44, 960 of them were people unworshipped. Unnoticed.




I would have been right there with them.


I don't care about being worshipped.


or noticed.






And that's what bothers me.


I just want off. I just want out.



I'm done.








Don't take this the wrong way.
It isn't a note. It isn't a goodbye. I have love. I have a world I want to experience. That doesn't mean it doesn't sit in my chest.


In my experience, a lot of people don't understand that.


Depression, mania, this... this world. It isn't a mood. It isn't a choice. It isn't a trend. It's life. It is our experience. We have happiness. We have joy. We have love. There is a vacuum though, at the center. Pulling, dragging, eating. Constant and thirsty and relentless. We ignore and we live and we try to live, but there it is.



I see a surprising and hilarious amount of people online posting the suicide hotline numbers. Retweeting messages of reaching out. Finding help. Being saved.


And I find it fucking appalling.


You don't think we know those resources are there?


You don't think we know people can talk us down?


Of course we do. WE are ignoring them. Are they going to fix our imbalances? Are they going to pay our debts? Are they going to shift the world into accepting we are the people we are?

No. They are band-aids.


Post the number. Let your followers know you are a good person. Don't message us though, right...? You know who we are.


You know who we are.


Like, I said, this isn't a letter. This isn't anything.




I just want you to be happy.




That is all I want.








Please be happy.

Be in Love

I imagine spring. The last of the snow banks. Diminished, wet and hopeless, pooling and evaporating among the new grass and new love and warm air.

I imagine the lift in my spirits. The love in my chest, the pull of my smile and the grip of your hand. The sun on your skin. The bright in your eyes.

For me.

I imagine you.

I imagine you and for a moment I am weightless and for a moment I smile to myself and I breathe and exhale glad to have exhaled and waiting excitedly for the inhale.

The sun on your skin. The grip of your hand.



Here now.

The distance, and I can focus. The treasures and the trash. I can sort them and see them for what they are. What they were, could be.

A friend, a heart; "How do you know when you're in love?"

Fuck if I know.

I just am.

You just are.

What does it matter?

Be in love.




I am in love.

Alone, and in love.

Pulled Eyelid and a Short & Uneventful Day

In that bar in Springer. 

A night like the idea of a night there.

I'm hitting you and you are bleeding from your mouth and nose. You yell and I hear you and the delight of it all keeps me going. Your hair is soaked in sweat and blood and you beg and I push my small finger into your eye and hook the lower lid and pull it and rip it right the fuck off of you and you scream out. No one notices. No one cares.

I sit back against the bench and watch as you bleed and cry.

"Better?" I ask.

"Better." You don't apologize. You know it means nothing. You know I'm coming after the other lid. Or a rib. Or your fucking scalp. You know I'm not done and you know you have earned it.

"Did you listen to the new..."

The conversation continues. Flows. You choke on blood you swallow and nod your head. You make points and some I agree with and some I don't. 

I wake slow into the black room.

The dream fades quick and my mouth is dry and my head is heavy. I lay still and realize in my sleep I was pressing my body hard into the mattress. I relax and dig my phone out from under my pillow to check the time.

1:17. After noon again. The thick curtain keeps the light out and I've been sleeping in short lapses for a few weeks now. I tried to get my sleep reset at one point by staying awake for a few days but that night I only slept an hour, and then two more hours in the morning and so it continued.

I slid out of bed. Put clothes on. Stumbled through the door and into the kitchen.

I was staying with Donald and his girlfriend Kelsey. They had a french press for coffee and after nearly two months of drinking or wearing grounds each morning I was beginning to get the hang of it.

Boil water on the stove. Four spoons of grounds. Pour a glass of water. Swallow it all. Walk to the bathroom. Piss. Try to call Elle but she doesn't answer and then I can hear the water already boiling. I pour the water into the french press and while it sits for a few minutes I go over the things I have to do.

Apply for more jobs.

Check my bank account.

Check the accounts of a project I was working on.

Render video.

After that, if I wasn't drained from responsibilities and the Florida sun, I could work on things I wanted to. Paint. Write. Music. Maybe a bike ride the mile into town and back.

Pour the coffee into the cup. Consider breakfast, but go to the couch to sit instead. Television on. Catch up on a show I was half-following.

The dream sits in me. The finger pulling at the eyelid and I keep seeing it behind my own.

I was fifty-two days clean and only drinking once or twice in the week. I wondered if my sleep problems had to do with that, but I would blame them on anything. It didn't matter, they were always there.

Two and a half cups of tolerable coffee and two episodes later the dream is mostly gone.

Elle messages me and we talk for a while as I sit at the computer and send out resumes.

I really could use a drink, I think. I had four dollars and change in the bank and I reasoned; well, what the hell else am I going to do with it?

The day went on and I drank water and ate spoonfuls of peanut butter and Donald and Kelsey came home from work and I, after what was a day really only made up of five or six hours, eventually went back to bed.

Repeat.

The Current

Kick open my front door.

Slam it behind me.

Scream into the dark house.

Doesn't help.

Scream again.

Doesn't help.

Scream again.

Throw the beer through the living room and into the kitchen. It hits the refrigerator two rooms away and in the dark I hear it crash, and I hear the beer spill and I scream again.

Four in the morning and I've been holding it back all night. Four in the morning and I've been holding you back all night.

You, honey eyes.

You, the other me.

This keeps happening and I'm back to insomnia and a friend told me they thought of sleeping pills but took a walk and changed their mind and I considered sleeping pills then but enough of them. No more.

I keep doing this.

Scream.

Doesn't help.

Fall to the floor and in the dark room I can hear the hum of the current through the house. Burn. Burn. Lay there and breathe and choke and imagine. No sleep. No dreams.

Breathe. Choke. Imagine.



In the morning I go to work. Keep busy. Don't think.

Keep busy. Try not to think.

Keep busy. Pretend I don't think.

Drink. Choke. Imagine.

My throat is sore and my chest aches. I stare and see nothing.

Snow Through the Night

Then winter.

Snow came the second week of December. Early, and in a foot. I was off work for a couple days and drank and watched it fall and wished I had more to drink and wished I was motivated. I fucked around with the guitar. With the organ. With the time. Snow fell in large swathes, in gentle pieces, gliding through the air, dancing never colliding, and finally resting as a new world, in love upon the last. Upon the leaves and grass, barbecues and t-shirts. Goodbye autumn. Goodbye hope of fortune. Goodbye to you, last strand of summer love. Goodbye.

Drink and watch the snow.

I never minded a snowstorm, and preferred a blizzard. I disliked winter intensely, though I loved snowfall. The ease of it. The way it seemed to hold warmth in the air. The comradery of the neighborhood shoveling together. The teenagers running and sliding on their boots down the street. The almost cheerful drone of the plows a few streets over. I would like to exist in two worlds; a world only in the third week of July, and a world perpetually in a neighborhood blizzard between 3 and 9 p.m..

Drink and watch the snow.

The thought of suicide had been kicking around a lot lately. My last honest attempt, the last time I went through with it was in August, but the last time I made plans... Wrote the note. Packed the bag full of rope and went to the bridge, well, that was only a month back. Suicide never really left my mind, as I assume it never really left anyone's. Are we not innately designed to want to die and lie to ourselves about it? I always felt as though my mental defect wasn't the suicide bit, it was the lying bit. I was terrible with lying to myself. I hate winter, but I admit I love snowfall.

Drink and watch the snow.

Dev was over, making enchiladas in my kitchen and I had a beer in my hand. The dark began to drift into the air, over the roofs and awnings, branches and snowbanks. On my stereo Chopin danced and flit and I eventually changed it over to Nick Cave and I sat in my house. My hovel. My warm portion of the cold town. I ate an enchilada. I drank. Through the dark the snowfall was invisible though I still found myself wandering to the window. Waiting for headlights to share a moment of peace with me. Waiting. Loving.

Drink and hope to watch the snow.

Drink and hope to love.

Snow, through the night, fell. I, through the night, loved.

A Silence for Voices

Five in the morning.

The house is dark and still.

I am on my side and my eyes are open. My brain is on fire and I miss you. I should have let you go completely, or not at all. Headfirst, or not at all. There is a pressure in my skull, between and behind my eyes. There is a choke in my chest, waiting for a moment to escape. There is a numbness through my skin and a silence in my throat because when it breaks, it all breaks.

Five in the morning and my eyes are open.

Christmas morning and now I drift through the empty house. The void, four bedrooms, two baths. The gifts you won't get. Memories we won't make. Worse, memories we did. Worse, memories you make alone now.

Fridge.

Beer.

Throw the first one back to kill the thirst, to satiate. No luck. Try again. Keep trying.

Through the window, past the goddamn reflection, I see the snow coming and heavy. I finish the other beer and put pants on. Shoes. Gloves. Coat. Fill a bag with more beer, and into the dark and snow.

Six inches or so. The stillness soothes but it leaves too much room for me. It leaves a silence for voices. My shoes are already wet. Open a beer. One glove to keep warm, one fingerless glove to open cans and text if it comes up.

The choke sits in my chest. Lodged. The pressure shifts, turns.

Earlier in the night I ran into the cop that tried to stop my suicide. He checks on me from time to time and I thanked him for being nice to me. He said he liked my art and when I walked away to go home I cried a little but the air froze it and eventually me. Goddamnit.

Goddamnit.

I am encased in snow already and each time I drink I eat a little snow and it gets in my eyes but I need to know the world continues. I need to know I am inconsequential. I need to know I am unimportant so I walk the middle of the street in a tire track and I stare in dark windows and hope the houses are warm and there is love in the rooms.

I only want love in your lives.

A car drives slow through the snow and dark far away from me and I wish them well and then they are gone. They never knew I was there.

I don't know where I am walking, I just keep going. I am cold. My fingers are numb and two more beers are gone and I remember I hadn't showered after work. Just got drunk and went home and got drunk and fell asleep. I try to remind myself to shower when I get home. Maybe I will. I come to an area with wi-fi and my phone picks it up. I stop under a tree and let whatever notifications are coming.

You.

A screen shot of a note on your phone. It's from my birthday last year and it is a poem about 'when I leave I will leave a symphony' or something. Prophetic, I suppose.


I don't know why you sent this to me.


I won't kill myself on Christmas. I won't jump off the Golden Gate. I won't hang in the Sea of Trees. I saw the cop earlier that night and I hadn't for a little while and I wonder, a little playfully, if he is still stopping my suicide. Should have knocked the fucking wine out of my coat or the beer out of my hand. I'll do it slow and miserably.


I want to see you, you say.


I am standing in front of apartments at five thirty in the morning. Drinking, freezing. See this.



So come, I say.

Tonight. Are you okay? You're acting really strange.

I'm fine. Always fine.

I love you.

Okay.



A snow plow crashes down the road and I step back as the wave of snow and ice falls violently around and I know he can pay his rent, the driver. I know he doesn't want to be awake right now, I know he'd rather be curled up to Warm Lovely Girl, but he can pay his rent and I envy him. I wish him luck and then he is gone and he never knew I was there.

I don't finish our conversation, I just leave. I leave the apartments and the wi-fi. Maybe you'll show up tonight. Maybe you won't. Maybe I won't. It's hard to tell.

I throw an empty can at a porch and hunched against the snow I walk nowhere. None of these sleeping people know I was there. None of these excited children know I was there. I've been trying to tell you all my name, and now I am thankful I haven't. Open the last beer and I miss you.

Dark and the snow.