Saving Chaos

a new world disorder

[savingchaos]

I only ever kind of liked blueberry muffins,

but you brought me one once and I said I liked them well enough.

you've brought me them ever since, thinking they're my favorite.

I'm starting to love blueberry muffins, because they taste like you.

they taste like affection and the safety I feel in your arms,

taste like quiet morning skies tinged still in blue darkness, softly fading,

while we watch it turn to light, between quickly fading cigarettes.

you think I love them best of all, and I'll never correct you.

I'll keep eating the blueberry muffins,

as long as you keep loving me.

[savingchaos]

c'est la vie

"I absolutely love my little home. yeah okay it's actually a trailer in the middle of a sorta sketchy park, but I love it all the same. I bought it myself, and I'm set back in a tiny hill. fucking wildflowers grow in my back yard. I never thought I'd be here," said max, dragging off yet another cigarette.

the sky was a quiet eggshell blue with a fingernail moon set in it. it was a little colder than max would have liked as she sat there in her threadbare tank top, but it was still lovely. she sat on her deck among a throng of daisies growing to the side, and marveled at the honeysuckle bush that grew wild a few feet away.

"I love this place. I love my quiet, I love my adorable little black cat that honestly looks like a goblin, but truly is so sweet. most of all though, I love you."

"you come to visit and everything just lights up. you found a four leaf clover in my yard. I'd never found one before that day, despite having the weird ability to find them anywhere. I finally found one too. I saved all the ones I've found since in a little glass cup of water near my window. ours were the only two that stayed green," max sighed, remembering the fleeting joy she'd found.

"you wrestle with me in my house, grab my arms in a hold and I'll laugh and laugh until I finally get out of it, with you yelling all the while that I shouldn't be winning. when we fell on my couch today, your scruffy face in my neck, I swear I felt love."

"later, you told me I made you feel better whenever you saw me, and I held you tighter than anyone I've ever held before. you said you saw stars because I just wouldn't let go. you laughed. you said you wanted to stay with me forever."

"you even tried to fake me out with the clock that read an hour prior, said I should turn around because my lunch break wasn't over. I wish it wasn't. I wish I could have held you forever, and I fucking smelled you on my skin for the rest of the day. it was torture, knowing I wouldn't hold you again for a while," she said, smiling a bit wistfully.

"but you told me, in the car, I could always cry on you if things got rough."

"no one's ever listened to me for that long, honestly. they've always either left me or used my vulnerability, my kindness, against me. you promised you wouldn't. I made you. you swore."

"I think I love you and I shouldn't."

"but every hour we spend together feels like a minute, a fleeting fucking minute packed with all the things we want to say and do, but never can. that never quite make it there. they're unsaid, but felt."

"I love you, dumbass," max whispered into nothing.

nothing heard her too, and her soft little feelings would be forever spared. does a tree make a noise in the woods when it falls and no one's there to hear it? max hoped this was true for her too. the stars and the clovers heard, but she hoped they wouldn't tell.

she swigged the last of her vodka and put out her last cigarette. she went back to her self chosen loneliness, finding some semblance of peace in it, besides the fact that she wanted him there more than anything.

she sighed and resigned herself to her quiet evening, with nothing more than a bottle for comfort.

[savingchaos]

"'please don't drink eight or nine shots, I know you'll drink at least six, but please try to limit it.'

'what fucking difference does it make at that point mom?' I asked.

she didn't have much of an answer, she didn't really know either," max said, sighing.

"but then she told me she loved me through all my insanity, she didn't have an answer, but she loved me. I cried.

this woman has seen me through hell and back, and she still just loves me with a love that's more than love. it kills me.

why should she love me still, with all that I've put her through, with her innocent sunshine heart?"

[savingchaos]

peter pan and the lost boys, but they're really, really lost this time

"peter pan. all my friends are fucking peter pan and the lost boys, they'll never grow up. I love them though, I've joined them just about, by now. "

max dragged on a cigarette, drank her diet mango seltzer vodka and sulked. she wanted a fun drink, one with all the calories and sugar, but couldn't justify the hangover that came the next morning.

"they all just live their life as if they were 12 years old, but now they can drink and smoke. it's them reclaiming the childhood they never had, I guess. most of them, it was taken by circumstance. abusive daddy, absent momma. I don't have that excuse. I knew love as a kid, but the fucking bipolar stole my childhood. I'm down there with them, reliving years of wasted youth. never got a chance to be a wild teenager, I was too doped up on psych meds and trying not to kill myself."

"I think this is the age I stopped maturing at, like the rest of them. we all stopped at around 13, 15 if we're lucky. we're stuck in the past, 25 year old, 50 year old relics from a better time. it's a defense. a denial in the face of the youth we lost. but now we're all fucking alcoholics, drug addicts, desperate dopamine chasers to replace what we lost. so we play childish jokes, fucking pull hair, punch and play fight, laugh at elementary school shit."

max chuckled sardonically, laughed in the face of what she knew she was.

"it's ridiculous. we cope with dumb fucking jokes, idiot pranks, then divulge our deepest darkest secrets while laughing the whole time once we're alone. looks like it's funny, from the outside, but we know each other. we give a solemn silence to the darkness that's finally said, out in the wildly fucking vulnerable open. then we make a joke, a dark fucking joke, to break that silence, put the other at ease. they shared, they were heard. but at least they weren't mocked. at least someone finally knew their trauma. at least someone finally cared."

max sighed. she felt the weight of too many peter pan heartbreak stories on her shoulders. she wanted to carry them all, save the lost boys at last, but she couldn't. she could barely save herself.

"'once you're grown up, you can't come back,'" she thought. maybe it was better that way.

[savingchaos]

destruction is relative, sometimes, I guess.

sometimes you have to choose between the rock and the hard place,

and hope you chose the softer crash.

[savingchaos]

I might burn you, I might keep you warm, you won't fucking figure it out quick

big gestures are just that,

grandiose and spectacular and like fireworks on the fourth of july.

but little gestures often mean so much more,

a quiet "I love you, but I'll never say it."

they're not quite a whimper but not a bang either;

they're something in between,

a match thrown onto some gasoline

with a rag or five for buffer.

they're a silent spark that might light crunched newsprint and tiny kindling sticks,

something that could start in a raging bonfire

a small thing that could become all light and heat and fire,

or something that might suffocate and dwindle to smoke and ash.

sometimes small gestures are just that,

a nothing sentiment that will make you feel a bit better,

but usually not.

usually,

they're just a quiet "I love you, but I'll never tell you."

[savingchaos]

take, take, take.

I don't wanna give a speech at your funeral.

I want you at my side,

right now,

a few years later,

a few decades later.

I want you to get better,

I want to care enough that you want to get better;

because maybe someone,

maybe me,

would be wrecked if you don't.

addiction is a cruel mistress,

and she takes all too much more than she gives.

[savingchaos]

sometimes your best isn't good enough, and that's one bitter pill to take

is it better

to swallow your pride and choke on it,

all the way down;

or is it better

to suffer,

and watch your heart break a little more,

as each dream flies past you?

[savingchaos]

not to me, not if it's you

loving me is rotten work,

my heart's a little broken and it's a little numb.

you'll have to shatter a shell or two

before you see all of me.

the wonderful,

the girl laughing wildly among sunlight and flowers, like nothing will ever touch her.

and the terrible,

the sobbing mess shattered on the floor, ruined by the demons who have taken root in her mind

for a day or a week or so.

and everything in between,

the utterly mundane, like my love for straight black coffee, or the fact that I only ever wear levi's jeans, on the rare occasion that I do.

loving me is rotten work.

they leave usually,

after the terrible.

I tell them though beforehand,

it's rotten work.

they don't believe me,

but then they see it, see that they've opened pandora's box all wrapped up in a broken little person

and can do nothing but walk out, a phantom figure I maybe loved once

or maybe didn't.

loving me is rotten work.

loving you is rotten work, this time.

but not to me,

not if it's you.

[epeolate]

“Persephone is having sex in hell. Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know what winter is, only that she is what causes it.”

— Louise Glück, Persephone the Wanderer. 1943

[savingchaos]

charybdis has found a new home, right inside my ribcage

there's a hole inside me that I'm always

desperately,

futilely,

trying to fill.

I'll throw whatever I can into the void.

food,

until my stomach hurts from eating.

new things

that I really don't even need.

and people too,

who I know are bound to be temporary, fleeting little memories.

though I still hope that maybe they'll grab a shovel

and help fill it for a minute,

but often their inevitable absence only makes it larger.

some days the hole seems quite small,

like I can almost see the bottom.

others it becomes a pit in my stomach,

a tightness in my chest,

a small sigh of defeat in my heart.

it's knocked the air out of me

today.

I suppose I'll find a shovel,

and start looking for vices to throw in.

[savingchaos]

thin and pretty and superficial as fuck

someone I used to maybe

possibly

see something with

messaged me today.

we went on one date

and it went nowhere,

but we were always friends.

hung out, drank beers, laughed.

I didn't see him for a while.

but today he messaged me.

maybe it was because I got skinny,

maybe it was because I got my life together.

I would hope it was the second,

but honestly,

it was probably the first.

I get attention now.

people seem to want me now.

now that I'm skinny.

now that I'm

maybe

almost

pretty again.

they never wanted me when I was fat.

never once.

I was cool to hang out with.

fun.

had a "great personality."

but they never thought I was pretty.

no one messaged me out of the blue.

not once.

but now I get attention.

I kind of like it, honestly.

it's nice to be wanted,

it sucks to be alone.

it's almost worse though,

to know I'm only pretty,

only loveable

when I'm skinny.

at least they want me now.

maybe they'll see me for me?

I'm knocking on wood.

I'm hoping for the best.

maybe they'll love me now.

now that I'm skinny.

[savingchaos]

there is a string that leads me to hope.

I tie the noose, but you are the rope

you can't quite tell someone

"hey, please message me back,

I'm using you as a stand-in

for the one I really want

because I can't have them."

you shouldn't do that to begin with,

I shouldn't do that either,

but I do.

sometimes you just need someone to fill the void,

the empty space left by someone too significant to quite let go yet.

maybe it's a space waiting vacant that you hope will be filled

by the one you're dying to love,

even though you know it's futile.

so you try to love someone that's a pale echo of who you truly need so desperately,

you don't really want them,

no,

but at least the hole will be covered over.

not filled,

no,

but patched for a time.

you can't say that though.

I shouldn't either.

[crying-in-quiet-deactivated2022]

I feel this sense of loneliness

Sliding across my soul

I feel this loneliness

Even though my life is whole

No drugs or vices seem to fill the hole I'm in

And though I try, I fail to turn away from sin

[savingchaos]

everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt

I am the highest power I believe in,

I am the captain of my ill-fated ship,

and it's all a fucking numbers game,

high-stakes poker but with my life.

I'm the only god I believe in,

and man am I a bad one,

but at least I control my own destiny,

for better or for worse.

the universe will never give a shit about me,

and that's the only way I want it.

everything was beautiful and nothing hurt,

because I know that it only hurts

when I'm sober

or depressed

or manic in the bad way.

it only hurts because of me.

it only hurts because I'm alive.

it hurts but I can feel it.

it hurts but it's okay, because god,

there's crazy

wild

joy too.

it's all my own.

I can claim it all.

but right now,

everything is beautiful

and nothing hurts.

[savingchaos]

an alcoholic walks into a bar

she doesn't walk out

this isn't a very funny joke, huh?

"it's funny y'know, when you joke about your addiction to cope. all dark fucking humor until you have to deal with it, until you face the consequences and it gets too real too fast. it's funny until you break down, until you drink to cope, and it becomes unfunny real quick."

max sat silently in her bed, unable to find comfort in the outdoors like she usually did, since the cold got more and more bitter and drove her indoors. her heater hushed and shut off, but the quiet sound soothed her, so she turned on her white noise machine to help. it sounded like the air conditioner she relied on in the hot summer nights, and it reminded her of better, blithe days.

"it's too funny to joke about being an alcoholic with your alcoholic buddies, until your alcoholism fucks you up so bad you can't deal with a hard day without a shot or 12 of vodka, and they just wake up without a hangover or any consequence because they've been this way for so long. that's when you see your future, what you'll become. but you don't care. not for the night, because you finally feel relief. I sure as fuck don't care right now because I've had panic attacks for a straight week. I've convinced myself it's the bipolar. I'm probably right. I'm not usually this bad, so what's the harm in another drink?"

"I've been hearing music at night and it keeps me up. I don't wanna know who's singing, and sometimes it's downright annoying. like yeah okay, the rock music is cool, but fucking opera? and creepy minor toned opera at that? yeah, not cool. I can't stand that shit on my best day, and I was a fucking symphony musician. I hate opera. sometimes I try to test it, see if I'm just imagining it, or if my brain is really singing to me. it hasn't helped. I can't find where it's going and I know I'm hearing fake shit. at least I know it I guess."

max was truly struggling, losing her shit, as she'd say. the music made no sense, and the only way to stop it was drinking, apparently. the vodka would drown it out, or counteract it. she didn't care what it was called, as long as it would stop. the noise machine droned on and tonight she was thankful that it was all she could hear. her cold feet, won from her last cigarette, warmed under her flannel blankets, while she fought inside herself, demons battling for position, each worse than the last.

"still though, this is better than being a fucking zombie. yeah shit sucks right now, but at least I feel something right?? I mean sometimes it's too strong and I have to numb it, like moonshine and tea. but still, moonshine and tea is 10 times better than water and bland, so I guess I'm living. maybe living a little too much. I like living a little too much. it's what I really am, the meds just make my "too much" just enough to cope with."

"my mom always said we're 72 records in a 45 RPM world. she said that about her sister too, who was bipolar like me. her sister was famous for saying, 'beam me up scotty, there's no intelligent life on this planet.'"

"I finally feel what my aunt was feeling, everything is so slow, or dull, or just blunt and boring. everyone just moves five seconds or more behind me, and I'm desperate for them to catch up. LIKE C'MON this is simple, just help me out a little, I need you to be there with me."

"it's not their fault. I'm not fucking einstein either all the time, I sometimes miss basic fucking shit because I'm overthinking it looking at the forest and totally missing the trees that everyfuckingone else sees."

"but god I wish they'd catch up sometimes. I'm manic, hypomanic?? I don't know right now, but I wish they'd catch up, just to fill in the gaps I can't see, because I got the rest. I do, I swear."

" I mean I know no one is drugging my drink at work and making me tired, but sometimes I wonder, like why am I exhausted?? why am I full of energy off a swig of water, then anxious but still tired off coffee and energy drinks?? I think it's suspicious, but I know in my rational mind I'm psychotic."

"I do. I know this isn't real like the music in my head. but I wonder. it's fake. I know it's fake. but still I wonder."

"still better than being numb."

max finished her vodka seltzer and went for a snack. she was hungry lately. she blamed herself for not losing more weight but she needed food to fill the void. new stuff too. she knew it, regretted it, but still did it. such is life, she supposed.

[savingchaos]

these colors don't run

all flags become white flags,

if you leave them out in the sun too long.

they bleach until colors that once were bright and true

bleed slowly into pastels,

and slower still into nothingness.

you don't quite notice it,

at first.

the fade's so subtle.

then you do one day and think,

"it's okay, I'll bring the flag in tomorrow.

I'm tired today, and it will be fine until then.

it's lasted this long, hasn't it?"

you just keep saying that,

tomorrow is always a day away,

and yet the flag bleaches still.

you don't care so much then,

it's a distant thought

buried so deep under others fighting for dominance,

others shouting louder in their urgency.

the flag slowly is forgotten.

colors once bright and true have passed pastels,

have hit a yellowed eggshell.

the flag is tattered from wind and rain,

torn from years of neglect

and abject indifference.

it is ready to give up.

"it's okay,"

you think.

"I'll buy a new flag,

maybe it's time for something new."

"I'll bring this one in tonight, I swear."