Stay sober long enough and someone will ask you to tell your story. Your story; as if we have only one. Stand before a hundred other alcoholics; twenty minutes of what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. So which days of thirty-one years will you offer in those twenty minutes?

I have until 7:30 tonight to ponder that; to obsess or sublimate or worry. The dark days in a little house in Minnesota where everyone had fallen asleep at the wheel: who the hell’s steering this bus? The dark and warm nights of vodka and cigarettes at a Florida campus; foolish infatuations that tore the seams of your heart. Like the back you’ll build later, torn muscles heal and grow with each wound. A packed auditorium erupts at the end of your poems; you’ll always remember that, they pulled you back on the stage and it did mean something; later your mother was beaming; she patted your head in clumsy joy and pride. Losing that to fears of mediocrity; move to another city, find a bittersweet joy that you could palm and pocket; swallow and snort it behind the doors of sweaty toilet stalls; reinvigorated you’re ready again to face what you could not alone.

That story? Why always the melancholia? Why always make them cry when you’d like to make them laugh? Give them something instead to hold up before them; something dangling in the light, hopeful.

It’s comforting to write of melancholy; it’s familiar, old hat. Sink and stay in a certain state. Isn’t it loss that you prefer?

People will fail you; that’s a certain. Everyone at some point will fail you, that’s called human. Is it even a decision, then, to have faith? Probably, but without it I’d be fucked.

I want to know someone walks beside me. Till then I’ll have a little faith; that there will always be some who cherish me, that there’s a greater plan for me, that I can be put to use, that we’ll all be okay. Tell that story, that’s the one.

Later

Well, wow.

That was the best thing I could have done for myself; I am truly soaring; music-on-dance-in-my-bedroom-happy. All humility aside, to have people call you a hero, an inspiration. I don’t care who you are, that feels fucking awesome.

I love my life. I love y’all. Bring on da funk.