Comfortably Numb
Escape, it has become a necessity. I’ve been using the bottle to escape for so long and now it’s the bottle from which I must escape. The end of June when I have a vacation I must get away; back to the road, something unknown. This I have realized, but I must keep it up for 4 more weeks, or it’s extremely likely that I will go completely mad.
I’ve been on these crazy nightly binges for 5 weeks straight now, and at first it was great. I just wish that the bottle wouldn’t have become this routine. Now I am obligated; I have no choice, and I feel remorse. Not all the time, it slowly starts creeping into my mind an hour or two before my session begins. As now, I feel confused, everything is a mess. All day I feel great, and in a few minutes when I take that first sip, I will once again feel comfortable with the whole process, but now my mind can’t comprehend anything without second guessing itself a hundred times over. 5 weeks of dulling my senses; 5 weeks of a fragile memory, in which only bits and pieces have remained.
It’s a necessity, to escape the bilious eye of the outside world. Ahh, yes, so there it is, the reason for it all. One of many, I’m sure. I wonder how they view me. reckless? pity? crazy? He goes for bike rides at 3am and lays in ditches howling at the moon. He dances around for no reason in this crazy little way that we can’t even begin to comprehend a reason. It’s freedom I tell them, and I don’t mind their views. Not when I have the bottle to protect me anyway, but take that away from me and I curl up into a fetal position and close my eyes. Now their words affect me, too afraid of what they might think, I lock myself away and hide hoping that I could be as free without the bottle as I am with it.
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Pine needles, the first sip of my concoction of gin and water. I feel every drop accumulate and burn deep down in my belly radiating a subtle warmth which lifts my spirits. The second sip, no where near inebriated, and yet the remorse and confusion already start to dissipate, because you know the comfort which it is about to bring as you feel it resting in your hand. It’s there; it’s something, and that’s not nothing.
What do those people think of me? reckless? pity? crazy? I laugh at them and their thoughts. I’m free I yell; I can die tomorrow, I have no regrets. I was never a part of that common herd. I can’t be content with just having a life to live, I have to live life, and I accept that it means I may die much younger, but I regret it not. Most people will squander their whole lives away without ever realizing this; liberated in spirit and thought, a smile creeps across my face.
Oh yes, how I do despise routines. Only 12 more drinks before I will even be able to consider sleep. Routines, routines, the same old thing, all for my dreams.
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the hope he had, the hope he bought
the hope, the bottle is what he sought
a desperate struggle it had brought
for in the bottle he was caught
no escape, no way out
tried every road, every route
left alone, and full of doubt
a curse, a cry, a scream, a shout
the last, the end he realized,
the bottle now which he despised
provided comfort as his prize
but took his life for compromise