One Afternoon.

The smoke rises like the house is taking a big breath in. It moves like a dancer for entertainment. It wraps itself around me like a cocoon, Jasmine you are magick. Sipping red wine at 10 am in bed that's going straight to my head. I'm swimming in a sea of unpredictability. Where do I go from here? Can I stretch my pennies long enough for another month? In the afternoon, I watch as the trees and I sway in sync to the same tune. I like the color of the leaves. They remind me of emeralds just waiting to be plucked from the stem. I didn't grow up rich nor would I have wanted to. Money doesn't grant you a better afterlife. A storm rolls in around 1:30. I stare at my dirty wine glass. The fingerprints look like ink blots in a psychiatrist's office or abstract art. I prefer the latter. Through the looking glass I see a goddess soaring through the skies bringing forth new life, making me believe such things are possible. What does that say about me? Later, in the cool afternoon, I lied in the grass and ran my hand across it, it felt like the unshaven beard of men I've known in the past. As the sun began to set and as I lapped my last drop of wine, i closed my eyes for a nap recharging for the nocturnal adventures ahead. I'll probably fuck something or someone up in the head. No matter the damage, I'll still wake up where I started from, alone.

Lucky.

“It’s time for you to find some of that little boy that you locked away so deep inside yourself. It’s not about surviving anymore. It’s about flourishing; it’s about living a full life.”

          I love that it’s finally warm enough to sleep with the window open. The cool breeze from outside is blowing in with a faint scent of lilac from the bush outside that’s been there since I was a kid. I truly feel charmed with my life right now and I owe it all to one trip far, far away from here. The long stretch of highway and hours of driving between my home and Albuquerque, NM was oddly relaxing. It gave me time to reflect on the past few months.

I didn’t start this year off on the right foot and often found myself in a blind rage or upset tears and then berate myself for feeling that way for no reason. I couldn’t smile anymore, at least in a genuine way and my inner disdain for daily life was starting to show on the outside. Thankfully, my friend’s invitation to get out of town for a couple days couldn’t have come at a perfect time. I threw what I could in a man bag and hit the road. I spent two blissful days forgetting all my stresses at home, exploring new places and gorging on so much delicious food. At one point I remembered thinking to myself, “when was the last time I was this happy?”

It was true; I honestly couldn’t remember when I was happy. Life and all the ugliness it entailed had taught me one thing over the years: survive or die. I was given two choices and I chose the former.  There was no time for having fun and making memories when I had to stay one step ahead of everything at all times. I was so busy trying to survive that my survival mode was the only setting I learned how to function on, and when I found myself in the position to where I didn’t have to keep fighting to stay alive anymore I panicked. Nothing made sense to me anymore, but that trip shocked something in my system. It was like I had woken up from an awful dream just like the ones I used to have a few years ago where I was constantly running for survival (which might explain why I’m skeletal looking in my waking life). Something sparked in me and it feels positive and like it has some staying power.

Maybe my idol Karen Walker said it best:

“For your entire life, fate has been cruel to you in almost every way. So . . . maybe this time fate stepped back, took a good look at you and said, ‘You know what? Enough already.’”

Granted, she was using her signature cleverness to take a jab at Grace, but maybe, just maybe she was on to something. Maybe I had paid all my karmic debt to the universe, well, at least from my past lives and all I had to do now was accept this newfound relief as my reward. So when I made it back home and rested a bit, I wrote out my two weeks’ notice to my retail job and left that part of my life behind. I wasn’t really good selling accessories to preteens anyway. I needed to get my head focused back on my original goal: to be a writer. What do I got to lose, honestly?

I used to define myself as “The Faller” of everyone’s life: “Someone who falls, who doesn’t make the grade, who stumbles, who life trips up.” It would make me so upset that everyone else was doing these amazing things and living these extraordinary lives and following their dreams, and here I was still living with my parents, single and childless. It would often make me feel inadequate and quite plain. I have lines on my neck from constantly looking down all my life and putting myself down. But like every bad habit such as nail biting or negative self talk; that was something else I had to leave behind.

Now, I wake up feeling well rested and enjoy the quiet of a bright morning before starting my day. I give thanks to the universe and pray to keep any negative words or thoughts away. Suddenly I’m using all of my senses to just live in the present, which is all I wanted all along and I realized that I have one of the best lives a guy could ever ask for. I love my small town lifestyle and the colorful characters that inhabit it.

This is all just a long winded way of saying I no longer feel like The Faller I feel . . . lucky.

Xoxo.

P. S. I’ll be spending more time in my fictional world of “G St.” as well as writing more short poems. Nothing is really happening in my reality so might as well enjoy being with my imagination. Everything is in the rough draft form right now but I’m so excited to share this new phase of my life with anyone reading right now. Big thanks to my good friend Matthew and Brandon for your constant support and belief in me. I hope to make you both proud in the future! 

The Party's Over.

Superficial fiction, that is what we lived in.
Walking home, stumbling in the wind.
We didn't care about our insides back then, just where we would reside every night.
Pouring it up, swallowing pills till those feelings that we had became ill will.
Fresh twenty-one meant only having fun.
There we were all best friends, craving immortality so that it'd never end.
Dressing in black to become the night, it's any wonder that we didn't die.
Hanging on to everything we knew, pearls on a string there were only few.
Crying in the car just before the dawn, I was moon meditating in the front lawn trying to find nirvana in where it all went wrong.
Three years later, we're still on the mend.
I still think about it when I fall into bed.
It's particularly hilarious, those realities of life In between those moments of high.