i have taken the pills that put me out. i have taken them more than i should have. i am overusing this week, this week of aches and coughs and pandemic.

sickness does this thing to me.

i become a different version of myself, no less honest, just more visible. my holes are wide open, and i miss and miss and miss the things and people from the past. i miss being close to the green things that made me feel like the world around me was alive and not electric. i miss being close to the things that victimized me. i miss them like one misses an old story that's been told to them over and over.

i know this sounds like the story of someone who wants to hold on to the things that bend and break us. and maybe that is exactly what i want, to be connected to a past i cannot recover from.

years of effort have proven this true.

no recovery. there is only the carrying of this from place to place, from person to person, and i wonder how many people have caught the contagion of my traumas--these things that slowly send us down a spiral that never ends until we carry them out of this world.

i have taken more than i needed to tonight. i have taken just enough to make me forget for the night the ways i have broken others and myself. i am a natural disaster. it's true. these things, they fall from me and onto others, and i force them to withdraw. they withdraw for their protection.

i fight this. but i know it's fair. they should be able to run from the things that make them feel like their own personal safety is at risk. and i put people at risk. i put them in positions of pain and pity.

pity is not what i seek, but at the same time, i will take it. what i want is for someone to implicitly know what i mean when i say the things i say and do the things i do. i want them to know that when i say i am fine that what i really mean is that i am never fine. i am never who i want to be. the closer i get to that thing the farther away it seems.

i have these thoughts, and they do not match the feelings, so i sit and write, and i try to find out exactly what i want. this is what i know.

i want arms around me in the night.
i want to never feel his hands again.
i want to never think of his mouth on mine.
i want to always remember the white ash trees in the summer.
i want to smoke pot.
i want to not drink.
i want to finish this mess i have started with a better ending.
i want tikkun olam.
i want to stop wanting and start having.
i want the people who matter to me to live longer than i do.
i want to protect everyone.
i want them to want to protect me
i want them to fail at it.
i want them just to want to.