Living With White Walls

People do drugs for an infinite number of reasons. People put these foreign substances in their bodies for pleasure, for ignorance, to feel a false sense of knowledge or spirituality, or to simply forget their less than enjoyable existence, even if it’s only for a moment. Some of the richest men and women in the world use drugs and alcohol in almost unfamothable excesses, but why? Are their seemingly infinite riches not enough? Many people go through all of this obsession and insanity only to come back to a reality that degrades itself exponentially after every use. What drives someone to use once they’ve realized the pains of withdrawal? Are our lives truly more unbearable than vomiting, muscle tension, or deafening paranoia? These questions bring me to the root of the problem; these questions tell me that something about the way the majority of us live our lives is simply incorrect.

When currently analyzing my personal situation as far as possible mental weak points go, I am beginning to see the signs of a potentially minor bipolar disorder. It doesn’t strain me to say that this issue is most probably genetic, and when pondering whether this may or may not be prevalent in many of my relatives I come to realize what the most probable truth is. Looking back I now realize that my sister who had gone down, and still continues on, the path laced with psycho-actives suffers from this issue in the most extreme of ways. Instead of attempting to rid herself of pharmaceutical crutches she covers up every new issue with another prescription. What I’ve come to understand is that this will only create more and more problems for her in the long run. Watching her life play out the way it has shows me that if I continue down the same path I will end up in the almost exact unfortunate position that she is in.

                As much as I hate to say it, the only road that leads to me enjoying a stable life is the one that is devoid of manufactured highs, bottled ignorance, and ingestible existentialism. When viewing things in hindsight, it is quite easy to see why I began using copious amounts of drugs and drinking excessively. This view also allows me to see why my mental health had degraded to where it had, and why my self-esteem is currently almost non-existent. Drugs seem to have this magical ability to show you your own life and what you can do to better it. With continual use they most certainly lead to the over analysis of self which can obviously be quite damaging to one psyche.

It doesn’t require a PHD in Psychology to understand that any further abuse of substances will certainly hamper my eventual recovery. This being said, I wouldn’t be telling the entire truth if I were to say that the allure of taking another mental vacation isn’t present. Luckily for me, it seems as if I’ve learned a thing or two in the past few months and have recently decided to decline a drug that was once irresistible to me. The thought of trying to become completely clean frightens me, but each day it’s starting to look like my only option.

As I sit here on the eve of my twentieth birthday I realize that it’s nearly impossible to force life to be exactly the way you’d always envisioned. As an early teen I always thought of what I would do for a living in broad and idealistic terms that left much of the in-between completely blank. Yes, I had grand plans of being a baseball player or a graphic designer, but I lacked a mature understanding of just what it takes to achieve these feats. In hindsight, it wasn’t the ease of my upbringing that made me so unnecessarily optimistic; in retrospect it seems to mostly come down to the fact that I never had any real hardships to overcome. Yes, I’ve been heckled for my height and other oddities about me, but who doesn’t have some sense of self-conscious subjectivity? I never had the alcoholic stepfather, and my family never had any true monetary issues. The only issues I ever caught wind of were the rebellious years of my sisters whose only real faults during that time consisted of the all too typical phase of drug use. This lack of conflict makes me feel a bit shamed for the amount of self-pity and apathy that I exude in my thoughts.

Lately it seems as if my view of reality is becoming increasingly more and more shrouded by the fears of what could be and what is. I’m starting to understand that, for the most part, the paranoia that rests in the back of almost every individuals mind is usually based off of some type of realistic expectation. Not to sound too grim, but my thoughts seem to be almost wholly polarized by moments of pure, blissful ignorance and those of complete and utter pessimism. This pessimism always leads to the same, isolated thought process that leaves me yearning for socialization. Despite how detached I feel roughly half the time, I realize that I am certainly not alone in these thoughts and this type of internal strife. On an almost daily basis I see the same sentiment all around me. A majority of people I know are unsettlingly easy to read, and even the ones that do everything they can to mask it with a false ego fail to fully cover themselves.

On certain occasions I will come across someone who, for the most part, seems to be at some type of crossroads that balances personal-motivation and self-actualization. This type of person usually maintains a relatively consistent positive vibe on a day to day basis regardless of what challenges they may be facing. These are the people that give me a palpable sense of hope that one day I can also settle at this crossroad so that I can lay my personal issues to rest. Until then, I know that things will not be easy, but despite everything that I imagine is working against me I know I need to keep a positive mindset.

therevolutionwillbelive:

being young with allison

we spent our younger years
dodging sprinklers, running
through fields, and wearing out
the motto: laughter really is
the best medicine

the sketchings of a crudely
drawn me she’d slip into my
locker, or the ‘N Sync lyrics 
I tried to pass off as poetry, 
not knowing she was their 
biggest fan

i remember her as the only girl
who ever found the big dipper
on my neck, and still the only girl
who i wish had been my 
first kiss