klonopin

I really like klonopin.  I take it pretty rarely.  But, I quite enjoy myself when I do.  It's not like woo woo im partying, more like yay my anxiety is gone and I can just peacefully exist for a few hours and hopefully get a good nights sleep. 

Last night I went out to a mellow show at a house near mine.  I spent the entire night talking to C's friend K who was just in town for a night.  He was challenging, interesting, a bit hokey, but great stranger company.  I was able to talk about some of my city life social group bullshit with someone who couldn't relate, at all.  This person travels all the time, lives out of a van, and is just totally different in the way they go about their life.  There was something beautiful in that conversation, the beauty of talking to a stranger when there is no pressure of building a friendship.  I found a note from him this morning on my desk:

Cosmo,
    It was so nice going to the music party with you last night.  Butterflies and Rainbows.
- K

perfect.  perfect.  perfect. 


Despite this I woke up today in the funk of all funks.  Anxiety, depression, lethargy, whatever you wanna call it.  it was brutal, I spend 90% of my day in bed watching dumb shit on my computer.  It wasn't until I took 2 klonopin at 7 that I walked outside, looked at the moon, and returned to my room to actually read.  The main character in the book I am reading reminds me of Alexis, my older sister, still born exactly one year before I was born.  I miss her right now, so much.  At my loneliest I think of her, at the peak of my happiness I do too.  She chose not to come here, to know me, to live with me.  I chose to come here, to fight and scrap and barely escape to get where I am now, which , i dunno, is somewhere.  Anyways, just thinking about Alexis brings up so much for me.  My younger brother was named after her, and we currently have what I consider to be a strained and not close relationship, which is a pretty big bummer for me.  Somehow, I am much closer with my sister these days.  Maybe that will change, maybe it won't.  Sometimes 18 years of living together in a fucking horrendously emotionally charged nightmare of a house, is too much to move past, the resentment too strong.  Alexis was never there for that, but I was.  I was the oldest, the experiment, the golden boy...I just wanted to be, but that was not an option.  I've spent a lot of time learning how to just be, and it has been one of the greatest battles of my life.  So alexis, if you are out there somewhere, know I love you and miss you, and wish I could look at you and hug you. 

On the bright side, Snail and I are doing fabulously.  It is hard to explain how awesome being with Snail is.  I feel free to explore and express my desires and we have so many so many so fucking many mutual desires, we have a positive feedback loop of good feelings, ugh.  They just texted me that I am a very cute and important walrus, and that feels so nice.  The 12 hours bone chilling anxiety I had today have finally come to an end, thanks to benzos and a snail.  Ugh, now back to reading Tom Robbins. 

this one

this one's for everyone that wears there fuckupness on the outside
for the ones who choose not to or can't hide the storm raging inside of them

For the overeaters with full bellies and stockpiles of sweets
for the non-eaters who are glanced at our of peripheries and whispered about

For the ones with scars running across their arms and legs
and the ones with burns that now look like rashes on their wrists

This one is for the chain smokers publicly breathing in their own death
And the one's with patches who are trying to cheat it

This one is for anyone who left their house and went out unshielded
who chose to wear their pain instead of fashionable armor

This one is the beautiful and tragic fight for life
For those doing anything to get to the next morning,
anything to make it through the night,
anything, any scar, for just one more chance

This one is for the ones who naively and hopelessly believe
in themselves, in change.

This is for the ones waking up each day set on destroying themselves,
dreaming of a world and a life that cannot be lived.  

to our friends?!

spent 10 hours at work today, a direct quote from a coworker "I hate that bitch" about our boss.  Seems like she is not very popular with anyone.  I was trying to explain to two friends after work how they hate the boss differently than I do.  The difference is they hate this boss, I hate the idea of a boss and it's material effect on me.  This material effect is texting, complaining, trying not to pay me, and several other mildly annoying things that coupled with my hatred of bosses in general, means I really hate here but also realize I'd probably hate most anyone in her position. 

So  after work I spent like 5 hours talking about this text, To Our Friends, which in my opinion is shit.  I'm not gonna break it down here, but it was really annoying and I felt misunderstood, which is always my least favorite feeling.  Ugh.  Why do people read such crap and pretend like a few skittles on top of the turd means we should consider and listen to the turd

dark times

I had a close friend, sometimes considered my best friend, move back to my town this past week.  He has been gone for 4 months.   Him and his partner moved in with several friends of mine, started projects with them, are coming to the reading group I go to every week, and he quit the project I do with him.  It feels like a storm came and is washing through me.  I was excited for this for a long time and it feels like I have been sucker punched, hit in the stomach, and I am keeled over trying to stand back up.  Part of me just wants to lay down and die.  Part of my just wants to die.  I am still scared of what that means so I know I will live, but what is a life on the ground or on your knees.  I have been learning how to stand for 31 years and every day it is a struggle to get out of bed and get on my feet.  In fact, most days I end up back in bed, once , twice, the three times, unable to move.  I become paralyzed by fear of standing and what it means.  I carry with me the pain of past lovers and friends, the shitty things I have done, and the shitty things they have done to me.  I want to completely destroy the image I have of myself and write a new one.  Am I strong enough.  I don't know.

on narratives and being a good person

When I started seeing my therapist a couple years ago he told me that one day I would look in the mirror and say "hey, this human looking back at me is a good person."  Now, I don't care about that.  I just see a person in the mirror.  I am no longer under the delusion that I can or should be anything, let alone something so arbitrary as "good."  So, what am I then?  Well let's start with the old narrative that used to run through my head, which looked something like this:
    I am a bad person and all my natural instincts end up hurting me and everyone else around me.  I can't act right, I cant speak right, I step on my words...I am bitter, jealous, angry, deceitful, dishonest, petty, resentful.  It takes every fiber of my being to be a decent person.  From the time I wake up til the time I go to bed I am fighting urges to do bad and hurtful things and it is only through extreme concentration and effort that I can be a functional person.  

the narrative continued in this way: 

    Because of all of this I will be forever alone.  Once people get to know the real me they will lose interest in me, they will realize how fucked I am, how much work goes into being the only halfway decent shit I am, and they will run away from me never to return.  I will never truly know anyone or be known by anyone, all my relationships will be temporary and fleeting.  Romantic love and deep lasting friendship are things I will not know, they are not for me. 


So where does this leave me now:

I question these narratives from the past but they return to me sometimes.  As I fight with my best friend now I wonder if I am fundamentally flawed, which is not something I even believe in.  I wonder why I talk so much shit, why I run my mouth so often, why I can't just learn to shut my fucking mouth for a while.  I wonder why I act shitty.  I am not sure.  I don't hate myself like I used to, but I don't want to hurt people anymore.  I am in the most beautiful relationship of my life with Snail.  What we have will remain with me until I am dead, no matter what happens.  It is so easy to be sweet to them and for them to be sweet to me.  I am not sure why I am not so sweet to everyone else.  I feel like I do it sometimes....I dunno.  I had a friend text me that I am a good friend yesterday, and another today, and a third on the phone 2 days ago, but something about being really close and seeing people often makes it really hard for me, but then I am left with the paradox of missing them if I don't see them often.  Fucked if I do, fucked if I don't.  Today is another day, and I can completely destroy the image staring back at me from the edge of the mirror and pen a new fiction about myself to be lived across the many other fictions passing in and out of my life