Passengers

Been a belaboring few days.

Tense shoulders and back, achy joints and a horribly busy mind.
Did the very things that normally cool down my overheated countenance but I was still scrambling for an answer.

This burden of frustration was getting heavy. It stunk and seeped all over all my nice things.  I couldn't bleach the stains, and not enough Tide rinses to handle the rest. I felt ashamed.  More than anything I was just tired. Tired of this heavy-metal, cumbersome "whatchamacallit".  I just wanted to be free.

So now-
Laying in stillness and all its splendor I finally have a clear moment to see the gold that shimmers all around me.  And some silver too.
I dropped my luggage of sickness at the doors of Choice and opened the door that read "Humble". With Humility the next door read "Acceptance" and it was a heavy drag but with some sweat I emerged. With one final grunt, I found it.
Love.
Love wrapped me so tight that I couldn't fight my way out of it, even though that wretched misery was starting to feel familiar.
Now I am ok, pleasant. No exaggerated worries to grimace at or wacky grins to laugh at. But this love all around me has cling to my hardest components and soothed every callous from carrying that unnecessary luggage.

Lesson Learned: when Lost, look for Love.

Make Room.

Grab some room, by all means. Occupy a small space I've saved just for you.
I'm sorry it isn't too pretty.
Some days I just can't keep up but it is always there for a stay or for a while.
It fits just perfect in all nuanced disbelief and off color swirls of chaos. On my side there is a white rag for defeat, and your side an obnoxious reminder of whom lays near me.
Some mornings you smother my mind.  Some Days you're so heavy I have to unload you somewhere. But at night is when I handle you best.
When we are both winded, depleted, in complete deficit is when I can wrestle you till the very end. At night, I win.
And all I have to do it try.

Pain. Not the choice

When thought of, it would be safe to assume that something accidental would be the culprit. A bump, something sharp and sudden, or sneaky and burning. Never an intent on breaking skin or hearts. No?
If it all were caused by careless accidents, then how do we heal?
That is the enigma; healing from accidents is nearer to nature. Safer to understand that the causation was not direct but off-aim. Yet lucky to be struck, I suppose. Easier to heal from a wound you know of.
What horror films and justice academy's are tasked at would be: when there is no accident at all. Just intent.
Pure, intensively activated intent to cause vengeful and specific Pain. Pain could be used as a mnemonic device for Participants Are In Neutral.
Neutral to the neighboring events to take place at the hands of a soul-less (NOT careless) beings of nightmares. Not hiding in your closet or under your bed: closer than your forgotten thought that you remembered a moment ago.
That Close.
Rose tinted world views easily hide the snarls of guilty bastards that gladly swarm in your oasis.
Pay Attention to the waves you didn't wake.
Pay Attention In Neutral.

Just a little bit of Sometimes

Dreams deferred don't often start that way but do end as such. But what about when a person reaches that same fate of reusability?

From a promise or a premise of endless enjoyment and distraction becomes a distant memory. Racked in used-up emotions that were tacked onto a wall of imagination. What then?
Whom or what do we miss most; the promise or the dream? The anticipation or the ante-up?

Juaquan.

Often I want to scream in protest of this heavy laden burden of Grief in loud, Capitol letters.
Sometimes I do.

I'm tired. I'm a little more gray, a little more quiet, and little less hungry, and a little less patient because I am without my boy.

Many times my answer to what people ask me is "I don't know". I'm just a little more cloudy and apprehensive. And afraid.

A quiet THANK YOU.
The many faces I saw at my brothers wake and funeral mass overwhelmed me and my family with strength and love. Any other moment I would've denied all available access to my wounds and pain. Protective of what is breaking me to pieces I suppose? But that day, somehow I knew I needed something.

Thanks to your imminent care, we got through this. The hugs, consoling, your precious presence slowly helping to rebuild my broken heart.

"We" will be ok.

RIP Tay-Tay.

Dear [ ]

Never a moment in most of my life (sober or not) have I felt so lost for words yet full of emotion. This mix has my level of uncomfortability at a rapid high where I just want to stop writing, but I reluctantly push on.
Yes, I suffer from alcoholism and I am in my third and highest level of treatment.  I am well aware how life has been set awry by my addiction and for that I'm sorry. But even before I could even spell the word addiction or alcoholism life with you has been war. A losing war to your constant judgement and criticism. I don't understand what is wrong with you? I'm ok with who I am but you refuse to allow me to remain ok with who I am. Why are you so focused on what I do whether right or wrong? Regardless you fail to support me in anything that you don't like as if it is you that is living it. I need for you to release me, I'm not you. I'm not in your womb. I am my own, not property of your ghosts or dreams.
The sad part for you is that I will run from you on my own if you chose to believe that you have any reign over my existence.  My plans don't revolve around you, but they don't have to experience your absence either.  My biggest fear is that you wish me to not succeed in sobriety so that I will always need you to rescue me. Finally I can say I feel safe in my environment of sobriety without you, and that is great. All you have to do at this point is listen, whether a second or an hour.
I never wanted your advice.

I see now why comfort is so important to me and why I yearn for it.
You were so protective over me that I never was allowed to rest in my own desires of what comfort is. You worked so hard to provide your idea of comfort while stripping me of mine to make it "ours". It took active measures to be comfortable at home, probably why I drank, and why I wished to never be home. It was not my comfort, it was yours. (8-7-18)

My Favorite Holiday To Hate

Elizabeth F. Jeudy CHRISTMAS: My narrative on my favortite holiday I’ve grown to hate. You are my gifts; I don’t need anything more than breath, but appreciation always woulld make me smile but I am willing to pass that on to those who are more than difficult to convince of their worth. That’s OK with me. When you are accepting at receiveing less because you’re already convincingly full of the non-tangebles, you accept the purposeful empty cards with whistful good wishes. You accept and say “Thank You for your thoughts”. While you have past due payements on adult responsibilities all to make sure the others in your life are pleased. My pleasure never mattered to me much, because it came not from my own selfish endeavors but from seeing those corny smiles from my family and friends. But I’m not being honest; the gifts I did receive were never what I requested when at long last asked “What would you like for Christmas?” I just accepted the last-minute thought-less gifts as at least something; at least I was a thought for just a moment. “No, take them and be grateful” was the constant speech I gave myself to appear merry and joyful. Those gifts to this day from a decade ago of dealing with this habit have remained in my closet untouched. I was always an earner, maybe a lull in times but when I was on, no one could stop me and I then looked forward to spend that little fortune on my clueless family to show some shallow grattitude of “LOOK WHAT I DID, LOOK WHAT I HAVE SPENT MY HARD HUSTLE MONEY ON JUST TO SHOW MY INKLING OF LOVE ON THIS HOLIDAY that I grown hate”. GOAL: Met- GOAL: Ignored. I am often not lonely but I will admit, these holidays will be a lonely set of joyless folly. I am so polite that these faux-kindness gifts and and Thank You’s are soaked up like well wishes often were, reminicent of War-Time propaganda; believing the best just to have something to believe in. I wished and prayed for recognition deeper than a summer rain puddle. Why doesn’t anyone get it? I smile so that you can smile back. I don’t frown so you can smile back, and force my smile for the same damn reason. God; I just want my smile to be organic, recognized, appreciated and pleasant to the eyes that matter. Please, I need a rescue from this nonesence holiday that breaks my bank account and subsequentially my heart. But after all it is Christmas, and all that Ho-Ho-Ho Jolly fun-time Opiate of December is abundantly annoying just knowing what is and has been essentially in store for me. So easy to swallow, so easy to succumb, so easy to smile. Merry Christmas.