the abyss gave me art. and booze.
"Someone said alcohol reduces the 'fatal intensity' of living. Maybe it was that." - Kaveh Akbar
“I want to be the chisel, not the David.
What can I make of being here? And what can I make of not?
Normal people think of recovery as a kind of abstinence: they imagine us sitting around white-knuckled, sweating as we count our hours trying desperately to distract ourselves enough to not relapse. This is because for normal people, drinking is an activity, like brushing their teeth or watching TV. They can reasonably imagine excising drinking, like any other activity, without collapsing their entire person.
For a drunk, there’s nothing but drink.
(…)
Getting sober means having to figure out how to spend twenty-four hours a day. It means building an entirely new personality, learning how to move your face, your fingers. It meant learning how to eat, how to speak among people and walk and fuck and worse than any of that, learning how to just sit still.
You’re moving into a house the last tenants trashed. You spend all your time ripping up the piss-carpet, filling in the holes in the wall, and you also somehow have to remember to feed yourself and make rent and not punch every person who talks to you in the face.
There’s no abstinence in it. There’s no self-will.
It’s a chisel. It’s surrender to the chisel.
Of course you don’t hope to come out a David.
It’s miracle enough to emerge still standing on two feet.”
- Kaveh Akbar, “Martyr!”
ironically, i don’t feel like it’s been a particularly stressful week. but my body seems to feel differently.
my ears are ringing. my hands are shaking. my head is throbbing.
i found myself doom scrolling on Instagram and TikTok ridiculously much this week. i’ve been extremely efficient at work. and extremely blank at home.
i’ve been ignoring everything i’m supposed to be doing to feel stable and mindful. well, almost everything.
still sober. so that’s a win.
but the need for that feeling of…
blissful nothingness…a life without the constant rollercoaster ride in between waves of grief and doom and greed and euphoria and despair and expectation and disappointment…
…i’ve found myself longing for that a lot these past few days.
“It was like sitting in the optometrist’s office, booze flashing its different lenses in front of your face and sometimes, for a second, it’d be the right prescription, the one that allowed you to catch a glimpse of the world as it was, beyond your grief, beyond your doom.
That was the clarity alcohol, and nothing else, gave.
Seeing life as everyone else did, as a place that could accommodate you.
But of course a second later it’d zoom past clarity through a flurry of increasingly opaque lenses until all you were able to see would be the dark of your own skull.”
- you guessed it: Kaveh Akbar, “Martyr!”
efficiency might sound great to most - to me, it sounds terrifying.
because it only rewards my false self.
because it always punishes my true self.
and it never fails to push me towards the abyss. towards anesthesia.
right now, i feel like i could run a government, solve world hunger and cure cancer.
i’m a GODDESS. a HEROINE. a LEGEND.
relentless. fierce. persistent. determined. tenacious.
S T R O N G .
fuck strong. fuck persistent. fuck fierce.
all i want is to be soft. and calm. and present.
and wild. and loud. and hot. and cold.
my bare feet dancing on the meadow in the morning dew.
my lungs filled with nourishing breaths.
my stomach full of cotton candy.
my arms feathery ivory-colored wings.
waving mane, bared fangs, clacking claws, fluttering ribbons.
i’m CONTENT. PEACEFUL. HERE.
A L I V E .
i’m gonna wrap myself around B.’s arms now. listen to Deftones. breathe.
True. Nothing like sobriety to show you just how many long seconds add up into a day. I drank so much coffee and slept my first few weeks. Thanks for this read🖤
So raw and beautiful. Truths and dark enlightenment 🖤