My beautiful curse

My hands stung and my eyes sunk into their sockets, dry and exposed. My escape. My beautiful curse. I lay there amidst the white sea. My skin hung on my bones. Pale. Brittle. Washed one too many times. And only to be dirtied again. I left the corners of my mind, fled outside to live with the air. I could never stand it, like a puppet I was played; making it worse that I knew. But I found a freedom in the wind outside of my mind. Away from the world I grew to hate. So lonely to have found solace in such places as this. It was too close to perfect. A surrender that pushed hopelessness so far away that it couldn’t be noticed. Engulfed by the raw ecstasy that came with giving up and giving in. I didn’t want to be strong anymore.

I loved that dark. I loved it so damn much. It had been there to comfort me since I was but only a boy. As the beads fell and hit my skin, I found a bliss that made my senses stand on end. I was so alive I could have counted every drop as they fell upon me. Light became more vivid; smells became new colors. I stood leaning against the wall, my forehead pressed into the ceramic, my eyes glazed as the drug finished running through my blood. I had found joy. Or should I say it found me. The young were always easy money. Suckered in for life.
 
I still wonder what’s happened to them. If they’ve been as lucky as I have, or if they've been forever cursed; we took it in together, more beautiful our fall. The pillaging of our own souls. But over the years it pushed my sanity into a small corner as it took up more space, eventually needing a high that I would struggle to not only obtain, but retain; turning moments into hours. Despite too many close calls and too many deaths, the things I began to seek only became more horrifying and threatening. But the higher the highs, the lower the lows; birthing a cycle that would always end up eating itself whole. Days came where my head became so full of grief that I could hear all of my thoughts at once; leaking out of my skull and into my ear; voices that didn’t make any sense... Like a balloon about to pop I came too close to never coming back...

If I'd never been shown a better world, I wouldn't have ever escaped.

Reviews

[Jessica M.]

"Engulfed by the raw ecstasy that came with giving up and giving in. I didn't want to be strong anymore."
my favorite line of the story.
the first high is the killer,
it's the decider - druggie or not.
The hardest part of drugs is the detox, I think you explained this quite eloquently.
Rehab, detox, lose part of yourself.

Nice story.

[Raef C. Boylan]

really poetic prose, full of imagery and interesting language
there's a kind of rhythm to it
i like how you chose to tell the story in this distanced, abstract way;
including enough details for us to understand the situation
but not merely spelling it out for us
you've made the reading pleasant without romanticisng the problem,
which i'm grateful for,
because i'm tired of living in a world where people
get famous on the back of songs about
beautiful misery
they must be faking
or not have understood
because you can't beautify it
and it's not like they're offering comfort
in a noble way
everyone's still messed up
and they're rich

haha, sorry
back to the writing...

great job
you found the balance
and penned it just right