“Appeals for Before” a Freewrite

2:45AM: Maybe it's "Queen Sugar" or maybe it's an old [female] friend hitting me at this hour, or maybe it's me telling a man I'm worth it (instead of just saying it myself) but an "awful" wave swept over me just now. Usually on "Q.S." I feel like Nova. Hell, take away the "grown issues" and siblings and I AM quite Nova. Yet, right now I feel like Darla. I resonated with the last episode (S4E09), how she clutched the bottle like a lifeline, like a scale or decision: "to relapse or not to relapse". Saying, "Relapse is on the road to recovery," like I used to say felt right when I was still self-harming. Though the weight of it is still bulky in truth, and the meaning even then was meant to be motivation to get up after a fall, currently it feels like a crutch...an excuse. I've held my "bottle" aka the blade so often, like Darla, bent over broken and sobbing, as if my tears could baptize the moment and wash the evil right out my hands. I've asked for my own tears to tsunami away my pain. Maybe this episode triggered me. Maybe I'm in my bag because I'm thinking about life and it's 2:50. Maybe I'm mad because I have no apologies to beg for, unlike Nova. No, I have no apologies to make because no bold moves have been made (lately...). I could relapse right now. I probably won't. About 85%, no 90% solid chance I will not. Then again, the idea of marking this day, or tomorrow rather, seems nice. I couldn't celebrate a year of sobriety - unpunctured flesh - because I didn't believe in myself enough to ever mark that down. Again, back then the agenda was different: "don't mark dates because it will make you anxious in wanting to 'stay the course'". I'd seen it a million times, me talking teens off the ledge who were filled with the guilt of "ruining" their 4-day, 3-week, 7-month etc. streaks. They held the guilt and remorse of a man on death row. That's how I came up with the phrase anyway: "Relapse is on the road to recovery." Generic but genuine. The time doesn't matter, just that you DID it and CAN Continue to. Yet, as this odd wave rushes over me...I feel as if I let myself down. The wisdom I harbored then hasn't seemed to stick and I...I wonder if like a child cancer patient, if I was so "great" because I had nothing else to "give" or show at that point! "Stakes". I don't gamble (frequently, lol) but I'm always betting something...pitting something, specifically myself-against-myself. The war never ceases, does it? I have frail optimism (what's new?). I am 23 and surprised. Downright scared deep down. "Confused" MOST honestly. My recovery has/is bringing me better places...people...yet I fear ruining it. I am so afraid. It shows. The energy seeps through everything I do and though THAT is not new, I can't help but to recall when I was a teenager, I actually did something WORTHY with that pain! I was an award-winning poet for fuck's sake! I was on TV, I was traveling as an artist FOR my artistry. I was living dreams I couldn't enjoy because I was too entrenched in pain and self-loathing; now I feel like I give even a slight damn about myself and I can't hold a pen...I don't care to. I hold mics and feel like I'm not worthy - and let that stunt me vs drive me. God!, I used to be so good at having inadequacy be my "driver". It's force almost became a gimmick I think. An authentic gimmick, but a crutch all the same. Processing shit the hEaLtHy wAy hasn't lent me much "art" lately, which brings me to the other phase I invented in my early teens: "Am I mad because I'm an artist or an artist because I'm mad?" I hate the answer I'm receiving. I am an artist! I am an artist! I am an artist with little inspiration, lacking motivation, and...I'm fucking exhausted. Maybe I will "Nova Bordelon". Maybe I'll air all the laundry that is or is not mine to say...maybe I make a problem to pray over, write over. Maybe I be the problem I cannot ever fix. It is 3:05 now and I think on all that is gone, all that is "supposed" to come. I think of the nuances and complexities of Corona. I think of conspiracies and my part and death and my death...what that looks like. What that "will" look like now that I've "resolved" not to make it be by my own hands. I think of and look at my hands, feeble yet strong. Strong yet feeble? I think...I know I think too much. Say too much. I think I'll post this. I do these free writes all the time. They're for me, almost like a diary, but I think about putting them in my 3rd book. Lol, the book I can't guarantee anyone will look at. There's no guarantees with art though, huh? I think - no, I know my first two books were fire. "Are" fire. I DON'T know if I'll pass this semester (despite a nearly heroic-level passing of the last). I know whatever life force and vitality I had is being sapped under the weight of my own.."ownness". I reiterate I did not expect to be alive and I thought I had tackled the weight of that already, but there's still a boulder on my back that refuses to roll away. Regardless of the forgiveness I've administered (energetically since I've been unfairly shut-out, lol) or the welts I've maintained as sacrifice for whatever "wrongness" lives within me, I feel the heaviness. The heaviness always got me to write, which is why I'm here now. God, I just want to know an art not created from my pain. It has never felt releasing. It has always felt just as if I'm writing to myself as another person so maybe SOMEONE on this Goddamn PLANET could make me FEEL Understood. The older I get...I don't think I still know that talent. Trust Me, it's a talent to understand me. I thought I had it down-pact (despite how saddening or even frustrating that comprehension would often be). I knew I had it down but I feel..as if I'm removed from Me. That's because I KNEW Me, but I have no fucking idea on WHO I AM Becoming. Fuck. 3:15AM and I decide to have an existential crisis instead of...I don’t fucking know. Maybe I'll share this in case anyone feels the same or maybe I'll share this because I refuse to cut myself so "reflection-porn" seems "safer". My skin tells on me already, doesn't it? What's one sad little piece of prose? "iF iT cOuLd hElP. iF iT cAn hEaL." Healing and helping everyone else but Myself. That's a "Me" I recall. Smh, thought I was passed that shit.... Vulnerability is a heavy bitch. Maybe laying your cards on a table means I don't mind losing this hand, just known I'll be coming right back around to whoop that ass next round. Nobody sees this shit, I mean THIS shit and I was saving it for the book I can't seem to focus enough to write nor compile (I write often so most "books" I will make are really just compilations from the "collection of spirit"). I think I want to share, but I'm scared. The one thing I "knew" about Me, "teen Me" is that I still operated out of fear, for the sakes of art and collective growth/conversation. I'm much less of a martyr now. Is that the issue? That's rhetorical (or is it??). It is now 3:21AM and I am proud of two things: the futon chair I purchased on credit and the closeness I feel to God again. I don't want to sacrifice that with blades or a bad decision. What I still lament is the lack of closeness to myself, my Beautiful Ass Self. I'm worse than the niggas (trying to unlearn that word) that played me (or rather: that I ALLOWED to play [Me]). I am RAD. AS. Fuck., yet I don't do what I should [for Me]. That's a tangent that I don't feel like going down, which I think says all it needs to in that breath, but I digress. It is now 3:24AM and I am grateful for artistic pieces that make me digest what I yearn to regurgitate - digest what I know to be necessary...I feel something in my stomach like "chance". "Take a chance" specifically. It makes no sense. It never does I guess. But, I will swallow. Relapse is on the road to recovery. Relapse doesn't have to look or be as bad as it used to be. New slogan. New system? Same Me, or maybe not. Maybe. Happy Earth Day; I don't know what goes, but I'm still working my way around. God, watch over me. Amen / Áse. Thank You. 3:28AM.