week 37: disguise

i remember sitting in a bar one night shortly after my twenty-second birthday. i had come back home from college and it was this first time i had visited that place since i had left.

i was sitting by myself, with a pitcher of beer and a notebook, writing things down and sketching when i noticed that some of the kids from a year below me in high school had entered the bar.

i was in a back corner and i doubt they noticed me but i wrote down, "it would seem that i am slowly running out of places to hide."

the reason this struck me the way that it had was that as soon as i was legally able to, i traded the coffee shop/denny's scene and started haunting the two or three bars in town. i had "enjoyed" about a year of not having to interact with people that i was tired of being around.

i was asked a few months ago about when it was exactly that things in my life had tipped over and started the path of self-destruction that i had followed to present. i don't think i really know. what i do know is that i remember the exact moment i gave up.

i was in class, it was an animation lab i think and it was the  week after thanksgiving break. i had been going through a devastating break up and i was in so much depression and pain that the only thing i could think to do was go down to the corner during a break and buy a bottle of vodka. i was sitting at my station, the light board turned off and the piles of papers stacked next to the bottle i had bought and i thought to myself: "fuck it, it's on."

that was the first day of basically thirteen straight years of daily and nightly drinking with few exceptions, and those exceptions were not pleasant nights..

i have come to believe that no matter how hard or long someone might try to hide, the world eventually finds them.

for years i had hidden behind books, sarcasm, smoking, indifference, sex, guitars, and drinking. all of these things that i presented with a smile and sometimes even a confidence i never truly felt. i could be surrounded by people and always somehow felt alone. i felt that the suit was wearing me.

today has been a pretty difficult day.

i am going through several very painful things and i want so badly to fall apart. i feel that dull ache in my throat, i feel tears that wont come burning behind my eyes and i cant seem to breathe properly. today i have fought the urge to sleep. today i know that doing something like buying a bottle and saying "fuck it" once again will not solve anything, in fact, i know that it would be a very short and messy trip, but still there is that part of me that wants to give in and just be done with everything.

all the songs that i usually use to try and wrap myself in aren't working tonight.

i'm sorry that this is such a depressing entry but i just cant keep this mask on any longer today, i'm just too tired.