crown of ruin

the car finally stopped at the lights and had nowhere else to go.

i ripped open my door and stormed up to the driver’s window.

i punched the glass and screamed every profanity i could find at him for the way he drove.

i was standing there in a bra and a skirt, traffic backed up behind me, my own car blocking a busy intersection while we held a mattress on the roof with our hands like idiots who thought we were invincible.

only days earlier someone had climbed three stories up to our unit, slipped inside our bedrooms while we slept, and taken our sega and whatever else they wanted.

we didn’t hear a thing.

three days i’d been out cold.

i don’t remember my dad picking me up from the hospital.

i don’t remember going home.

i don’t even know what i overdosed on.

somehow i kept a job through this.

still partied every weekend.

still filled the nights with strippers and randoms and whatever bodies wandered past.

still hooked up with guys i barely remembered.

this was living apparently.

no.

this was chaos.

this was an escape attempt.

an escape from life.

an escape from the version of me i had built without thinking.

i had no idea who i wanted to be, who i wanted around me, how i wanted to act.

the drugs made me feel special.

they made me feel powerful.

they took me to a place where i didn’t have to face the chaos that was now my life.

it was pure disorder

a tangled mess that pulled me in every direction

threads tightening around each other until i couldn’t see where anything started or ended.

that lifestyle took another twenty five years before i could finally let it all unravel

to see chaos for what it was

and learn how to work with it

instead of living inside it.