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[somewhat-sanguine]

peace out

A lot of people seem to enjoy the sights and sounds of running water. Watching the waves crash onto the shore of a sandy beach or observing a twisting river find it's end into a cascading waterfall. I've always had a fascination with large bodies of still water. Whether it be a serene, mirror-like pond or the normally cantankerous ocean in the dead of night at low tide where all you can hear is the wind. Unwavering, peaceful and quiet. Seemingly unbothered by the forces of nature that surround it.

I aim to be like that. I aim to be the type of being that is unbothered by the chaos and uncertainty that surrounds me. I've been trying so long to fill this void within myself; this restless feeling of insecurity. The void itself has become filled with terror and insecurity, so is it still a void within myself, or just part of my very being? Is what I feared true, am I now the void?

I have looked to other avenues to find peace, especially in this frigid little city. Trois-Rivières is full of such beautiful and historic sights. Anyone would be lucky to experience such an rich and delightful area. So why is it that the only building I can relate to here is the old prison down the road, which was closed for it's horrific treatment of it's prisoners? Lights left flickering inside, seeming to dim a bit more each day, reminiscent of something that was once perhaps too bright. Am I the prisoner, and is my mind the prison and my self-neglect and hatred the prison guard? The echoing of chambers shutting, the yelling, the screaming. Negative self-talk that has become so intense it doesn't feel like self-talk anymore. It feels as though an outside force is beating down on me. I feel as though I am my own enemy, but it's an enemy I do not recognize as myself. I'm imprisoned.

[somewhat-sanguine]

unrequited love

I remember watching you walk from building A to building D during second period class changes. Your soft red curls bounced while sunlight reflected off of them, your dark roots were just starting to peak out, reminiscent of a smoldering flame. The way you strolled was almost ethereal -- you looked so calm, so at ease, like you were floating. How different you were from me! I always felt so heavy, so down-trodden. Perhaps that is why I became so enthralled by you.

I never thought you would notice me, but you did. Once. That's all I needed. You told me you liked my combat boots. Black, dirty, scuffed, the sole had started separating from the base of the shoe. You told me they suited me, which coming from anyone else would have been received negatively as a back-handed compliment... but from you, I knew there was no malicious intentions... it was sincere. You looked past my destruction and saw ME. All of me.

I wrote a letter to you in my yearbook. I asked you to sign it.

You didn't notice. You smiled, and signed it, and then went back to your group of loud-mouthed friends.

That was two weeks before graduation. You still smiled at me in the hall, sometimes you said hi, but I never got more than that.

You moved out of state, to a good university...Vanderbilt, was it?

I guess it wasn't meant to be. Perhaps, once again, I read too far into something that wasn't supposed to mean anything... just cordialness. Meaningless to you, perhaps, because you were always so kind, so nice, to everyone. I was just another recipient of your sweet words... you uplifted everyone, everywhere you went. Was I just another karma token to you?

I still think about you.

What if, what if, what if?

What if.

[somewhat-sanguine]

secret whispers

I walk to school with the frost nipping my face, towards the bus stop to catch the death-trap that is the Three Rivers High schoolbus. It's January -- still in the midst of winter, so the sugar maple trees are completely barren. There is still some soggy orange leaves in the icy snow. The only way you could make out that they were ever leaves in the first place is their colour. Suddenly, I hear rustling. I look around for a small pine tree to see if there are any critters running around looking for some sort of sustenance in this frozen wasteland. Nothing. Whatever, I think nothing of it and continue on my way. It was probably just some snow falling and knocking a branch down.

I finally arrive to my stop, and there's only a few other kids standing around waiting. I've forgotten my gloves for the second time this week and it's a Tuesday. Whatever. I tuck my hands into my coat pockets and wait. I stand away from the other kids -- I don't really get along with anyone else. I'm a loner. The weird kid. The odd one out. Plus, they're always snickering or whispering about something. Someone. I can't stand it. If you have something to say, especially to me, just come say it out loud. Cowards.

Finally the bus arrives. The wheels look like they're about to fall off, they're all warped and bumpy looking. When the vehicle comes to a screeching halt, it almost sounds like someone screaming. I just find it amazing how the school considers this machine a perfectly valid way of transporting children. As soon as I climb the steps and peer over the front seat to find a place to sit, I notice something is extremely off. The bus is twice as full as usual. It's going to be almost impossible to find an actual seat to sit in. I guess they must have added another stop to the route, which is stupid. We were already almost full and now we're over max capacity. Whatever. I'll just sit in the aisle towards the back.

The ride is bumpy, and to make matters worse, the other kids won't shut up. No one is yelling, but all the whispering makes my brain feel like it wants to explode. I can hear everyone's conversation but yet can't make out any one conversation clearly. I hear what sounds like chains clanging, I'm assuming one of the more edgy kids has some sort of chain-link key-chain which only adds to the nosiness of the bus. I think about finding him and yanking it off his backpack and throwing it out the window. No. Don't. Be good. You don't want another "situation" again.

Finally we arrive. I'm greeted by a pretty blonde lady in a completely white office outfit.

"Welcome to Three Rivers Forensic Psychiatric Unit. We understand you've just been transferred from juvenile hall? You're in good hands. You'll have all the time in the world to get better, now."

[somewhat-sanguine]

my sinner. come closer, i am here. and be my dying light. you're burning down(three rivers)

When I left America, I was near death. I had spent the last few weeks in a cycle of intoxication and withdrawal, overdosing and resuscitation. On the plane ride to Montreal, I was in withdrawals. I had downed about a quarter of a handle of vodka that morning just to keep the sickness at bay to get past security, in the hopes that I would be comfortable enough on the plane ride to be able to just sleep and go into my sickness quietly. That wasn't exactly the case...you would have thought that an entire preschool at decided to fly into Montreal at the same time I did. None stop screaming, non-stop pooping (not only from the children...there was a cat on the plane ride too...), parents going up and down the plane trying to soothe their poor babies who lost it every time the plane went through turbulence or their ears popped. It is the last place any addict in withdrawal would want to be besides perhaps jail.

Still, I was excited. I was excited to start my new life there. To see the weather and meet the people and explore the terrain. To spend time with my future husband. Most of all... to finally get clean. I knew Lance wasn't going to tolerate my drinking, he certainly wasn't going to buy it for me. I was in a strange new land where French was the main language, so scouting out drugs in alley ways and down sketchy streets wasn't an option like it would have been in British Columbia or Ontario. I was away from the place I was born; the place where all my trauma had originated and all my vices took hold of me. I had left myself no other option but to get sober. It was scary, it was intense, but I knew it was either this or death.

In Florida I was at the point where I would go days without eating, drink and use for three to four days at a time and then spend two days puking up bile because my body was so sick. It would reject even water, because it became so used to me shoving poison into it and was fearful that all I would put in it would be poisonous. I would spend my days in bed, shivering, feeling like this was it. This was my last hurrah. My body was littered with bruises and sores. My body was unable to heal itself because my liver was so damaged. Even the wound on my breast, which should have been closed a month ago, struggled to heal. If anyone reading this struggles to understand the power of addiction, let that last paragraph really sink in. Your addiction is your everything. It is your entire persona, it is your lifestyle, it is the people you hang out with and the friends you choose, it is your environment, it is the essence of your entire being...and like an abusive relationship, you can't get out of it. Even if you want to. It digs it's claws into you and holds on tight, but eventually it starts ripping you to shreds and causes you to lose everything you hold dear and force everyone you love to watch.

[somewhat-sanguine]

it's all in vain no compromise, no deals (numbers)

I’ve been obsessed with numbers since I could remember. Not in the intellectual, mathematical way, but in the irrational and sometimes all-consuming way. I would go into the shops with my mother as a child as young as five and organise the products neatly in equal lines and columns, and a row or column being short compared to the products next to it terrorised my mind. Imperfect. Horrible. The buzzing in my mind could be soothed by reorganising the products to line up neatly in sets of three or five. If there was still a wayward product that didn’t fit neatly into these arbitrary sets I created, I’d push that product behind the shelf so I didn’t have to see it. Out of sight out of mind. It didn’t exist in my world view anymore. Rationally, it still existed, I didn’t fix the problem of the imperfect rows and columns, I just shoved it behind something else so that my mind would be soothed. I would stand back, away from the shelf, and admire my handiwork. 

The only numbers I considered “perfect”, from a purely groundless standpoint, were zero, three, and five. If I didn't do certain tasks in groups of these numbers, or end the task at a time ending in one of these numbers, I just wouldn’t start the task or perhaps worse, I wouldn’t stop. I would start brushing my teeth at 7:03 am so that I could finish at 7:05 am.   Cheese crackers must be eaten in groups of five. Pages of books must be read in groups of three before pausing. An eighth was the perfect amount of bud to buy because it’s 3.5 grams, never buy more unless it’s separated into eighths because quarters and ounces are imperfect. Drink beer in groups of three. Snort dirty 30’s in three neat lines. When you load that needle up, make sure you can see that the poison in the barrel stops at a number ending in zero, three, or five. 

If I wanted to get clean, It had to be on either the first day of the month or the last day of the month. However,  if the month should end or start on a Wednesday there was no point because anything that starts or stops on a Wednesday is bound to fail, because Wednesdays are imperfect. Alternatively, Sunday could be the last day of a bender but it could never be the first day. Friday could be the beginning of a bender, but it would have to end on either the following Monday or the following Sunday. 

Pointless, illogical, but powerful rules that I so steadfastly abided by kept me from getting clean for almost a decade. Brief periods of sobriety, the longest being a seven month stint, lead further into the trenches of drug and alcohol addiction. I would be a liar if I said that sobriety was always the goal. I fell in love with, and romanticised, the coming up and the coming down. The searching and the copping. The withdrawals and the sickness. The plan was always death, until death decided to evade me one too many times. Life, on the other hand, no matter how painful and tragic, kept going. I was alive despite all my efforts. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I suppose. If I’m forced to remain on this Earth I might as well make the most of it because it surely seems whoever is in charge upstairs in the clouds doesn’t want me to visit yet. 

I’m going to be perfectly blunt: I always found the concept of “you choose your own destiny” complete and utter bullshit. “Life happens” is much more apropos. Life happened to me, and it happened to me hard, but I did nothing to take control of it. I bastardised the meaning of “life happens” and turned it into a phrase of nihilism, self-pity, and utter powerlessness. I was completely and perfectly comfortable in the addict lifestyle. Relished, in it even. Life was happening to me and the only thing I could do was drink and snort and inject it away, right? My thought was life was going to constantly be “happening” no matter what I did so any effort to make myself a better person in ethics or morality or productivity was for nought. I clung to this ideology like an alcoholic clings to their bottle, because after nearly a decade I lost the person I was and who I was meant to become. 

I spent a lot of time reminiscing and looking at old pictures, I spent a lot of time reading my old works. I spent a lot of time crying and missing the girl in those pictures terribly, because I no longer recognised her. Was she really dead? That was the plan, wasn’t it? To die? The girl who was the face my old profile and social media accounts was dead, so why was I still who and who the fuck am I?

The plan was always death, and die I did but not in the way I planned. A spiritual and emotional husk, death overcame me from the inside and left a broken and battered mind and body. A cruel and tortuous existence, but clearly this shell of a person is not going anywhere, anytime soon. I suppose, without being too verbose, what I am trying to convey is that I choose life. I will find the girl I once was inside this coffin of a body and I will reignite her spark. Why, you must be asking, after nearly a decade, would I bother? Wouldn’t it just be easier to succumb to this lifestyle slowly, or perhaps take it out in a quick snuff with a noose and a closet? It’s because I can still hear that girl inside myself, screaming to get out, screaming to prosper and recover. Her screams are getting deafening, when they started only as a whisper a few years ago. She screams of a life worth living. 

[somewhat-sanguine]

and your mom would drink until she was no longer speaking, and dad would dream of all the different ways to die (alienation of affection)

My view of what a “healthy” relationship looks like is… twisted, at best. Non-existent at worst. I could never really tell which one of my parents was in the wrong, and who was in the right. Truth be told, before my father’s stroke in 2013, it did appear to be my mother who was the instigator and the “problem”.

I vividly remember my father, who worked long hours while my mother lied about at home to drink and smoke cigarettes, coming home to try to just give her a kiss on the cheek. It was rejected. She would accuse him of cheating. My father started sleeping on the couch when I was around eight years old, and although my parents tried to say it was because of his bad back, I knew what the real reason was. Alienation of affection. Not from him, from her.

My parents met each other in a newspaper ad, of all places. Both were fast approaching their forties, and I suppose they thought time was running out. My mother was, and still is, a devout Christian. My father is agnostic. My mother, according to her drunken ramblings that I unwillingly paid witness to as a pre-teen, did not believe in any sex that wasn’t for the explicit purpose of procreation. She got her two kids, and he was left in a loveless, passionless marriage. I’m not sure what the game-plan for sustaining a loving marriage and raising well-rounded children was, but clearly it didn’t pan out well. My mother would get obscenely drunk, pass out, and my father would always carry her to bed. His kindness was not returned, not even with so much as a "thank you."

Seeing my mother drink away his money and contribute nothing to the household coloured my view of what a relationship shouldn’t be. Was my father an alcoholic as well? Yes, he was…however he went outside the home and contributed to it. He worked full time while mowing the lawn and doing husbandly duties during the weekends. My mother’s largest contribution was buying McDonald’s with my father’s money for my brother and I. If we were lucky, she would toss some frozen pizza into the oven and call it a night. There were some nights that she would drink herself into such a state that she was incapable of even feeding us. My father was also too drunk at this point to care, as well. I developed a taste for cold, still-in-the-can ravioli that I still crave to this day. 

I have no problem with women who choose to go outside the home and work, I have no problem with women who choose to be proper home-makers and full time child-rearers…but what does seem unfair is when a spouse is allowed to drain their partner of finances while just indulging in their addiction. I’m an addict and alcoholic as well, I get it, to a point. But how could someone look into their hungry child’s eyes, hungry not just for food but for love and support and guidance, and choose to look away from their eyes just to continue to stare down into the bottom of the bottle? How could you reject the man you’ve married innocent advances, especially after he’s just slaved away all day at work for you? When I was with my ex-fiance, I had dinner waiting for him when he came home. I greeted him with a hug and a kiss, I helped him take his shoes off and had the house cleaned and his sleep clothes ready for him. I’m not saying this is how all women should be, or even strive to be. Perhaps seeing how my mother treated my father made me want to go in the extreme opposite direction of how she was. 

I want to be a mother and a wife. It’s one of my greatest goals in life. I find myself to be so very different from my mother, and sometimes I wonder if it’s just my nature or if my upbringing caused me to be so resentful of her, that I try as hard as I can to be her opposite…and that makes me even more ashamed to share the traits of alcoholic and schizophrenic with her. 

I know I am not her. I know I am my own person. I know alcoholism is common amongst schizophrenics, and it doesn’t mean that I am becoming my mother or that I will ever become my mother. But I would be a liar if I said that I wasn’t fearful of it.

[somewhat-sanguine]

i am drifting through the stages of the rapture born within this loss (the schizoaffective diagnosis)

“Abilify, 10mg in the morning and 10mg at night, Wellbutrin 150mg once a day, 5mg of Prasozin and 100mg of Trazodone at night. Come see me again in a month.” 

I didn’t ask for my diagnosis. I didn’t think it was important, honestly. I figured it was just for the same thing I had always been treated for: Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features. I was to diligently take my pills, not ask questions, and (attempt) to abstain from alcohol. I wasn’t exactly truthful at that point with my psychiatrist about just how much alcohol I was consuming, but she was aware I had been in and out of rehabs and psychiatric wards for about three years at that point. 

I looked over my paperwork. The diagnoses were listed plainly, with no explanation or any sort of information.

“POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER”

Okay, that’s fair, I figured. I had been traumatized since I was a young child, and the doctor had mentioned that the Prasozin was specifically for that.

“SCHIZOAFFECTIVE: BIPOLAR TYPE”

It felt like the cogs in my brain stopped working, caught in the flood of words that filled my mind trying to figure out what exactly those words meant. I knew what bipolar was… schizo…schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder…schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia.

I opened up a tab on the browser of my phone. I googled the words “schizoaffective”. Maybe it was just one of those silly psychology terms that didn’t mean what it sounded like. Maybe.

“Schizoaffective disorder is a mental health disorder that is marked by a combination of schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions, and mood disorder symptoms, such as depression or mania.” were the words I first saw on the Mayo Clinic website. 

My heart sank. Flashbacks to my mother babbling to herself about conspiracy theories, about the end of the world, about Christ, about God appearing to her in a cloud and hearing the “word of God” through thundering in cloudy skies. Going up to random people and proclaiming that Jesus spoke to her. Telling me I was possessed by Satan for spilling a glass of water by accident.

My mother is schizophrenic. I’m not like her, not at all. I’m not even religious, I’m agnostic. I don’t listen to conspiracy theory bullshit. I hear the occasional odd sound that no one else seems to hear. I see the occasional shadow that no one else seems to see. Big deal, doesn’t everyone? The mind plays tricks on you. 

I hear the sound of voices in the buzzing of machines. I feel the vibration of my phone in my pocket even though it’s in another room. 

I laugh when I’m alone and there’s nothing to laugh about. I hear my name being called out in an empty house. 

Big deal. Doesn’t everyone?

…Doesn’t everyone?

[somewhat-sanguine]

why are you so concerned? do you really care or do you feel responsible? (day one)

Today’s the day. Today is the day I’ve decided to finally commit to my journey towards permanent sobriety. It’s my day one. I hope it’s my last day one.

I want to get a tattoo with 9/20 on it. Maybe that’ll help encourage me to stay sober…but really the alcoholic liver disease is what should be encouraging me. I’m having trouble imagining a year from now, being able to say I’m one year sober, because it’s never happened before. My longest streak was seven months. But I was explicitly told by the hospital that I’m to completely abstain from alcohol, nothing. No beer, no wine. I would also be lying to myself if I said I could control my alcohol intake like that. One is never, ever enough. It never has been. I was an alcoholic since my first sip…no, since birth, I think. 

I used to try and find reasons for it, when in reality it’s a combination of a lot of different things. It’s the schizo-affective disorder, it’s the trauma, it’s genetics, etc…it doesn’t matter. I can’t keep thinking “well…what if…then maybe I wouldn’t be an alcoholic.” The fact of the matter is, I am. I am, and it’s killing me. I’m only 26. I truthfully never intended to make it this far. I wanted to ride out this disease till death. Something in me changed today while I was reflecting. I was thinking about all the people my addiction I’ve hurt, about all the people that have loved me and have had to step away because they can’t bear to see me destroy myself like this. Thinking about all of the people that are still by my side, hoping I can pull through, loving me. Hurting them. I’m hurting them, probably more than I’m hurting myself, at least emotionally. Physically, I’m the one harming myself. 

This is my real day one, and it’s so, so fucking terrifying.

[somewhat-sanguine]

no narcotics in my brain can make this go away (anhedonia)

I don’t quite remember what it feels like to experience pleasure anymore. My dopamine receptors are shot. Everything I feel, besides sadness, is blunted and muted but at the same time almost indescribable. Like a vicious swirling of emotion inside my mind, brief instances of happiness fade so fast and my brain feels like worms squirming on the sidewalk in the summer heat. What’s worse, perhaps, is the immense wave of loneliness I feel mixed with tinges of shame. I don’t quite remember much at all anymore, the last decade or so of my life is a blur because of drugs and alcohol…and yet I crave those things so much. My baseline levels of dopamine are so fucked the only thing that elevates them is a few swigs of vodka or a few lines of coke. I sat down to write a poem, but because of the brain fog (I am only three days sober), I feel as though I am unable to write anything cohesive, meaningful, and most of all poetic. I look back at my old poetry and feel envy… I feel distant from the work I used to put my heart and soul into.

I am tired. Oh so tired. How much easier it would be to poison myself and my brain again…but I have to keep that little voice inside of myself alive, the voice that whispers “You are more than this, there must be more to life than this.”

I wish I could laugh and smile. I wish I had someone to just…even just play a video game with. I’ve thought about joining some random servers or an online game to try to connect to people, but I inevitably begin to feel as though I am a burden to everyone I attempt to connect with. I have not yet figured out if that’s the post-withdrawal depression talking, or if it’s actually true. 

I know I push people away, I know I ignore people, and I’m not sure if that’s in correlation with how much of a burden I feel I am or if I push them away before they can leave me. 

What’s wrong with me? 

[somewhat-sanguine]

help me leave you, as all the days are done (memory lane)

I walk along the jagged and cracked black pavement, watching the leaves dance and swirl around in the wind, a vivid jig of browns and oranges and reds. I think about us. I think about how we used to dance, almost as carefree and whimsically as the foliage in front of me. I stop. The clouds above my head are beginning to form and turn black, and the air smells of rain. A sickening, almost mildewy scent is being carried by the currents of air that are quickening around me as the sky darkens. Yet somehow, despite you not being around, despite you not being around for a very long time at this point, I still catch whiffs of your cologne floating through the breeze. 

I catch glimpses of you everywhere I look. I catch your bright smile among the street lamps in the pitch blackness of the night. I feel the scratchiness of your perfectly manicured beard when I lay down on my pillow at night. I hear the hoarseness of your snoring amongst the rolling thunder of summer evenings. I wonder, when you look up at the moon, do you ever think of me? Am I full moon, like when we first met, or am I a waning crescent moon like when we said goodbye? Perhaps, now, I’m merely a new moon.

I let all of the drugs and alcohol consume me, I served them instead of letting them serve me. I am sorry for that. I let them take my health, my wealth, my mind…but the most precious thing they took from me will always be you…Or was it I who simply allowed you to slip through my fingers, too busy reveling in my debauchery? I am just now getting my mind back. It has been eight days. My brain still lights up at the thought of hedonism. Perhaps the anhedonia is keeping me grounded, perhaps it does serve some purpose after all…