an empty victory

I avoid the mirror, the bloodshot eyes stained from the tears brought by years of frustration, 
I look instead inside, searching for an answer, a reason. 
Some sort of justification. Anything. 
The energy it took, the agonizing pain I forced myself to get past or swallow or get through, the stench of my own flesh decomposing, rotting away on my legs…
So many times I could have stopped fighting, so many times I wanted to. 
It wouldn’t have taken more than a few weeks until I went away, and if the pain got too unbearable I had the pills stashed. 
An hour at most, into one last dream – 
and then nothing but a name
forgotten in time.

But I had hope. I believed that things could be better.
That they would be.

How wrong I was.

So now, I search inside
for the passion
the rage
the anger
that i have found 
and hold so dear

I search for the love,
a reason,
a purpose…

but these past months
the deeper i go
the less i find and
the less i find a reason
to go on.

Seven years since I left the hospice, seven years fighting against the current, trying desperately to make it to calm water… 
and for what? For THIS fucking life? This life, where loneliness eats away at my heart, where I seldom know where the next meal is coming from, where I can’t even pay my bills.
This is not what I fought for. Not what I lived for – and I can’t help but think, at times, that I made a mistake.

But here I am. If it was a mistake, it’s already been made, and it’s far too late to give up now.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll sell some jewelry, maybe I’ll soon finally be able to buy a car so I can not only do the things I need for my business to make it grow, but escape this city and just drive until I find a place – a beach or forest somewhere, alone, where I can find my heart again.

Maybe.

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Dying tends to take a lot out of you, I guess.

Early morning, finally a night that ended before the sky started to glow with the morning light. It almost wasn’t by choice – after a week of no more than three hours of sleep a couple times a day, the weariness of my body and mind revolted and actually took over my brain, making me think that 8pm was a fine time to go to sleep for the night. Under the condition that it let me wake up at 4am, we came to a compromise.

It was nice to shut my mind down, I’ll admit. to stop thinking about why I love to make jewelry so much, what my goals are, who my ideal customer is, mu core values and my “why” – all things that I need to consider, as apparently “because I like it” isn’t enough.
Of course, it is a reason, but it’s a safe one, one that doesn’t make you dig deeper inside of yourself for all the smaller reasons that make me “like it” – and without those, without digging down to the core of why I do what I do, and why I am growing more towards a particular style, it would be like Picasso answering a question of why he painted his wacky faces with something like “Well, I thought it looked cool”.

But it’s been a long time since I’ve truly questioned things like that, the strange thoughts swimming around inside of me, and why I am who I am. It’s like the time in the hospice took something away. As if the years after it have been far too placid, and all I needed to do was float along, slowly disappearing with only the memories of who I was left to fade in the minds of others as my own existence, my heart and mind, and my dreams – were slowly consumed by the grey fog of an unchallenged, dispassionate life.

It would have been easy to succumb to if I hadn’t tasted the beauty in the chaos of my life before the hospice, but now I find myself as a bird born into the wild might after it was caught, clipped and caged – every day looking out to the sky, its beautiful colors fading as it longed to again stretch its wings…

This is all over the place, this writing – but it’s necessary. With the words I’ll remember who I was, remember the chaos and passion that is still inside of me but muzzled by my own complacency.

It’s time to create my self again. To give birth to a dancing star.

To ask why, and remember the warrior inside of me.

anywhere and to her

Wake up, start the water for coffee, shower the remnants of yesterday’s heat off of me, wondering what today will bring. To let it or make it happen. I don’t like not being able to control if I see her, and for that I feel childish. I wonder if I should feel childish, not getting my way and letting it upset me – but this is more than just wanting a trinket I could do without. Pour the coffee. Complete the base ritual.

She thought it was about her. Of course it was, but not about her. She is only the reason for voicing my frustration, making what I feel all days impossible to push aside, accept and ignore until things work out right and I have the freedom of going anywhere and to her. She is the exclamation point, not allowing the ease I have learned to push this need back and I notice my crippled wings.
I have worn them far too long, waiting for their repair and the freedom to fly again, to anywhere and to her.

I miss the roads. Is is wrong to say that I need the roads? Need to drive? We are taught not to need, that it is a base and unenlightened state. Just another material thing. I don’t need it. I tell myself I don’t need it. I try to fool myself but I know better. I know because without the roads, without the freedom, without the wind I feel caged. I’m able to pretend everything is find until I I am reminded of the bars that surround me.