And in the end...I left the beer...

I ran out of sleeping pills so I went to the grocery store to pick up more.

Things look different lately.

Sometimes I hate writing in this stupid blog because it just brings to light the things I don't want to admit to.

It was late and the store was quiet. Now that I think about it, it was eerie. I don't recall the music playing like it usually did. A few people meandered around the store. I walked straight to the medicine isle. I knew exactly where to find what I was looking for.

My roommate hid the alcohol from me, but I already found it this weekend. Everyone always hides it in the same spot. It was easy enough to get to with a chair. But to keep to my own promise to myself, I left it in the cabinet and decided I would only get to it on the weekends. I would not drink during the week.

The feeling of not being able to do what I want at that moment is not easy, but I let it go.

I just want to wind-down, relax. Yet I have this pull to make a small drink and enjoy my time alone watching movies, my new favorite pastime. Mostly romantic stories, but every now and then I throw in something abstract, like Factory Girl.

This new addiction feels good.

I found my sleeping pills and in the quiet eerie store I walked to the cashier. As I stood there, something pulled at me, so I got out of line and walked to the beer isle.

I grabbed a six-pack of Red Stripe.

I started walking back to the cashier, but as I approached the end of the isle I stopped. Pills and booze. Did I want to go down that road again? I turned around and put the beer back. I kept the pills and walked back to the cashier.

There is something to be said about how I am seeing the world currently. Almost like an indie film. Things look different. Music sounds different and it's as if I am seeing things through a 35mm lens. It all just looks so different. Clearer. As if I am following myself with a camera.

This weekend I did everything alone, but I didn't notice. I walked the parade with my camera, capturing people in moments they will never remember, but that I would. I sat at Upper Crust and got lost in a book as I sat alone enjoying the bustle of downtown on a sunny afternoon. On Sunday I went to church in the old El Ray theater, and again, it was as if I was outside of myself. I couldn't explain it. Everyone was completely unaware that I was observing them and everything that was felt in that theater. The walls are painted with such eerie looking fairies. Chubby, cross-eyed, peeling fairies. The ceiling was high and the paisley design was so abstract and out of context yet it was so perfectly exact as what it should have been. Then the music made me cry because it reminded me of everything I had prayed so hard for this past year...for peace. For that hand to reach down and pick me up and brush me off and remind me that it was all just a stupid illusion and that this is where my mind should be...clear and peaceful and that what I went through was just a test. And as I am being brushed off and we are laughing at the whole thing I am told "You passed. Welcome to your new mind". And then I see it all...the fog is lifted.

Something happened. I don't know what it was, but something huge happened. And I don't know when it was, and I don't know how it was, but I woke up, and the heaviness was gone. It was gone. I can't explain it anymore than that. This heaviness that suffocated me and was slowly killing me for so long just up and left.

And I have no idea what it was. But it left.

I hate confessing on this blog. I hate that people can read my mind and feel my feelings. But the times that I feel compelled to write it, I tell myself I must post it because someone always gathers something from it.

So I do.

I left the beer, I took the pills. I swallowed half of one about 20 minutes ago. There is something inside me that hates that weakness I feel when I need that comfort. That small little something that makes me feel ok. And it's not that I don't feel ok, but there is is this want, this craving, this feeling inside me like an itch, a very small one, but it just wants to be itched. It's small, it's waning, and soon it will be forgotten.

I cannot remember the last time I felt so at peace with myself and the things around me. I know I am babbling to some degree, but I cannot get over how absolutely beautiful and free I feel right now. All the things that took over my thoughts and my emotions are gone. I felt like this since before my party. Something happened and whatever it is, I finally feel normal again. After all of it. After everything, I finally am at peace with everything.

And I left the beer.

My house is absurdly peaceful. The t.v. is not blaring, there is no music on, it's just the simple sounds of the wind in the trees outside, of the cars that occasionally race down Mangrove, bringing and leaving a hum with it. The sound of tires running on pavement. It's such a simple soothing sound. A rush that leads to nothing but its fading echo through the streets.

The sound of nothing used to give me anxiety. The feeling of nothing to do to fill my nights was maddening. I don't know what happened, and I don't know why, but at this moment, I feel at peace. Dare I say it's because of the heaviness of some people? It might be, I'm not sure, but lately I found the more I rid my life of those I feel who bring me down, the greater I feel. Maybe they were the heaviness.

And in the end, I left the beer.

Sometimes you just have to leave some things behind to move on.