An Addict's Mind

Anyone who says recovery is easy is lying. It's the hardest fucking thing in the world. Every single day I fight to stay sober, and some days it's easy, but some days I go to sleep with a heart so bruised and bleeding from the fight that I'm ready to give up and get high. Because at least when I'm high I don't have to feel the pain, right?

I haven't written poetry in a very long time, but now seemed like a good time to start again. These are the thoughts that go through my head, the lies and hard truths I tell myself, and a reminder of what will happen, what I'll lose, if I don't stay sober.

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I’ve got a war in my mind,
A war that’s all too familiar,
To the broken, the addicted, the self-destructed failures,
Between what we know is good
What they say will make us happy,
Will materialize that phantom we call serenity,
And what we know will break our hearts
Make the mind, soul, body helpless,
Claw us back into chaos and artificial bliss.
On one side a life of joy and peace,
On the other darkness, pain, fear,
Ask any sane person and the answer is clear.

But therein lies the problem,
I’m fucking insane,
There’s nothing normal, nothing logical about my brain.
I don’t want peace and safety,
Pain and struggle are my addiction,
I choose and accept self-inflicted damnation.
I will not limit my experience,
Confined to the straight and narrow,
Give me darkness, suffering, the Devil of the Tarot.
I grow through heartbreak,
The struggle makes me strong,
My life is made richer by everything that’s wrong.

But this passion for adventure,
This nomadic untamed soul,
This love for everything that is lost and unwhole,
Fearlessness born of experience,
Paradoxical addiction to freedom,
Reckless and confident through whatever may come,
If this nature runs rampant,
If I let myself go,
I eventually fly too high, burn like Icarus, implode,
In a million jagged pieces,
I break myself beyond repair,
All in the name of trying to understand and care,
For a city that won’t be loved,
But takes a true loving heart,
And sucks out the life, rips its soul apart.

These vampires of time and memory,
That hunt the kind and naive,
Seduce, then maim and ruin, anything alive,
Instead of helping
Or fixing the people I love,
I give in to the chaos, from below or above.
I become a victim,
Powerless in the hand,
Of manipulative forces I didn’t understand,
That whispered in my ear,
And promised relief from the pain,
By pouring crystal poison into vein after vein.
To these angels of darkness,
I offer myself willingly,
Thinking somehow I’ll be justified eventually.
A sacrifice that killed herself,
With a needle full of demons,
Made a deal with the devil: my soul for experience.