Addicted

I am addicted to a self deprecating way of thinking and
I suffer from a consistent self-destructive tick.
Listen,
I’m not saying I’m incapable of being kind to myself,
I’m just saying that for as long as I can remember...
it’s been much more difficult than it should’ve been.

I romanticize the idea of being lost
and I wanna hold hands with my pain and ask her if my bruise, her home, needs to be bigger.
I don’t know why I keep holding these images in my mind
like they’ll afford me a better way of coping with what I cannot identify in my headspace, but in a twisted and way too tangible way
it works sometimes.
Like the times that I make my knuckles turn purple or
like the times that I remember that one spot on my thigh that no one can see.

I’m not asking for your help,
really, honestly I’m not that type of person.
I never have been.
I’m just mentioning because I read somewhere that the most dangerous self-inflicted pain is that which is never known.
I’m just trying to prove that I know.

Kristopher asked me one time if I was “better”.
I told him yes.
I told him John was a good therapist.
He did his job as best he could.
But Kristopher, better is not a state of being
it’s so much harder than that.

I’m better because I don’t want you to ask anymore.
I’m better because I lied to John just enough for him to think I was OK.
I’m better because I want to say I am.
None of this means that better is in fact, better for me.

I cannot outlive the images in my mind because I am the one who put them there.
And yet, despite this, I have the gall to call them out as my demons,
as if they were not invited by my own ideas of being and hating and loving and fighting;
as if I did not welcome them with open arms into my anxious solitude
like a flickering lighthouse over a sea who’s tides cannot be predicted in any map of currents or moons.

I’m addicted to believing that my nightmares are bred by evil things that can’t be seen
and that my anguish is caused by something greater than myself.
I am not enough to form an army against my mind,
for I am merely a vessel in which it presides.

False!
I am who I am because I chose what to leave behind and what to carry within.
I
Am
Addicted.

I’m addicted to not knowing when I wake up what I will choose for my body in the day.
Soda or water
Cereal or bagels
Food or fast
Light skin or purple.
It’s like she’s waiting just around the corner
silent and patient and mean.
Waiting for me to sink just enough.
Waiting for the tide to reach my already weakened knees.
Waiting for her home to return to some place on my body
that I am all too prepared to let her have.

This is not a cry for help this is a cry of war.
I am not a vessel
My mind is not outside of my control.
I am addicted but I am also human,
and humans are made to fall.
Rarely is that the end.
It will not be mine.

I am addicted to this feeling of being more;
I strive to burn all traces of her home from my mind.
She is not the queen of my vessel,
for there are no queens on a ship.
I am the captain now.