Smoke

In all of this wellness, this healing and
sobriety and newfound clarity and mental capacity

I sometimes still have trouble dealing with the large information.

The kind of information that rattles you, causes your head to
swim and your ears to buzz.  The kind that leaves you feeling foggy,
cluttered and unaware.

Often I feel like I am walking through smoke, choking on the too-thick
air, unable to see in front of me and feeling my steps slow even though I
will the feet to propel forward –

slowing until I’m certain my knees are giving in but
I’m already on the floor and the mind is registering only
after the fact, lagging.

The most profound difference between the me-then and the me-now is
that I don’t fall.
The breakdowns don’t happen, that the knees feel weak but don’t give out.

I want this – I’m sure this should be enough.
 

But today it isn’t.

The mind is so much stronger than the body, and it falls even
when the body doesn’t.

I could mention how ironic it is that I never felt this fuzzy in
a pot-induced, drunken, rainbow-of-pills consumed
stupor.

Now there’s only sobriety.
There’s only clarity in how fuzzy it all is.

And the big information makes it worse.
It scares me how inept my mind is at dealing with the dailies,
the real-lifes that everyone’s been living for eternity while I drank
mine away – drowning all truths in 90 proof.

I sometimes wish I would have been the drunken addict that
got sick – vomited and purged it all up and out when the body was too full.
Found a way to rid myself of it, even if only temporarily or
in an effort to refill.

But I was only the blackout drunk.

I suppose if the hole is big enough, you can never drink or smoke or eat
enough pills to fill it, so there’s never a reason to empty it.

 

I know a recovering man who drank antifreeze to hold him in the nights
when the liquor stores weren’t open.

 

What do you do when there’s nothing
left?

_________________________________________

I guess that’s about the time you
recover
find a god
and hope for the best.

_________________________________________

What do I do with a love
that’s too big for me?

What do you say to someone who cares
for you so insanely much that
you question their mental capacity,
while feeling so overwhelmingly greatful that you
avoid them until you can find space in your
mind for it all?

If you can’t love properly with reduced
inhibitions, how do
you pull it off
with clarity?

*-V.