Survival is expensive; at times it has cost me everything. It is a succubus and I’m running out of things to feed it.
I am no stranger to anxiety and the thunderstorms of depression. 7 years
of surviving, of existing,
chained to thoughts burning like napalm in the back of my head and
handcuffed, bare knuckle brawling, against the devils that put them there.
What do you know of peace when the mind becomes a maze and sanity is on the other side of it? to be caged. to be a prisoner of your introspection. running into dead ends only to double back on myself again.
and again.
and again.
running from any thoughts hunting me down like reapers; fiends lusting after spilled blood and everything fit to kill me.
and I would set myself alight if I believed these demons would burn too.
My bones are exhausted, my muscles are worn and heels scarred but maybe rest is earned. in repetitions like steel singing in the gym until failure,
until it’s a different kind of nausea inhabiting my stomach. When you keep speaking to the walls trying to shift the burden from your chest
and
praying for some semblance of clarity at 4am so sleep can visit you for a while.
All this for survival.
What is strength when your appetite has collapsed into the black hole sitting in your gut?
because most days it just escaping the comfort come shackles of your bed.
It is moving.
It is eye contact when self loathing grips your throat and claws at your tongue
Forcing food down the gullet for sustenance.
Strength is the courage it takes to look in the mirror and know I am a good man struggling to re-learn self love
and failing but grateful for tomorrow is another day. Another morning.
Another sunrise. Knowing martyrdom looks beautiful but I have felt the sun and her warmth.
But lately, it is all I can do to keep myself where the light is.
Mental notes burned into my skull reading ‘even if the blood on the mat is dry, it is still mine’.
I got a little skin the game.
I’ve escaped this maze before.
I’ve pushed these Sisyphean boulders,
born of the weight of worlds which do not belong to me,
up mountains
Agony, always agony, and still, I have revelled in the view from the top.
I have lived here
I have died here
I have survived here.
I still possess a 6ft skyscraper spine
I am still my brother’s keeper and he is still mine
I have built all of this beauty from the dirt and the dust, the sweat and the tears, the blood and the prayer.
and I’m still praying.
Praying deep like there are mountains that need moving but I am a man with broken hands trying to break bread or boulders against this beast.
like lately praying and prostration is all I have so maybe God will hear me roaring through this nightmare if I scream His name to the heavens
I was a teenager when I first realised if I can think myself into hell, I can write myself into heaven. I’m just struggling to find the ink.
poeliticaljazz 