imaginary means

A pack of gum cannot replace the cravings I have. I feel like I've given up my right and left legs respectively to overcome my addictions, and still, they are wielding within me, tearing me up and begging me to go back to the way things were.

When I had two firm legs to stand on.

What addictions?
Dating.
My childhood.
The snuff of the Midwest.
Ink dribbling out my fingertips.

Some of these things I've given up voluntarily, while others seem to have been unexpectedly torn out of my grasp. I've embraced certain addictions to overcome the one's in which I had no control, and I've slept all day, stayed up all night trying to adopt a way to comprehend my careless, ego feeding yet self defeating actions.

Dating is an addition that is gone because it needs to be. Because I've depended on it to assume the role of 'adult' and to get to know this venue of a city. It's gone because I'm only happy when I'm with someone, imagining love and hope and freedom; without the flirtatious emails and dinners and butterflies keeping me company, I am blank. 1st dates have been my prioritized hobby. Now that's a problem.

I used the behavior quite intentionally and simply to catapult myself away from my past and into a dream. I was scared like a run away child when I arrived in San Francisco, so I got into some things that weren't healthy as an escape from reality. I abandoned my home after all, this was my decision and my fate, so I continued to take all the yellow brick roads to no where, not realizing they led me so deep and far away from where I truly longed to be.

In the Pacific Time Zone, I had to quickly learn the steps to independence as if it were an intricate foreign dance everyone else seem to know innately. I've always been the girl in school the teachers deemed "wise beyond her years," but that wisdom failed to support my wobbly legs and dizziness as I two-stepped my way around the new world. So far away from familiar sights and sounds, I took a big bite into adulthood and lost my childhood forever. It's been a mistake.

Realizing what I've done, I've become frozen in my uncertain adult form. When I look in the mirror, I don't recognize the body I carry. I don't recall the things that make me happiest, and I don't have the flexibility in mind or limb to sketch my thoughts on paper in translation of the new reality. I can hardly work with this panic, so I try to spend as much time as possible in one position - staring into the mirror, deep into my irises, trying to see who's in there running the show. Then I'll sit next to the reflection and look at pictures from my past, from my crawling stages through high school prom, and I wonder what happened to get me so lost.

With all this in mind, the recent days have gone by in a blaze, and my greatest accomplishment has been to sit within the wild of the fire without a hope to guard me. It's left me like a burnt marshmallow. My skin is on fire and aching to the point of wanting to scrape it off by whatever means necessary, and inside I'm gooey and soft and completely apathetic to the world. I'm not as much cool on the inside as I am numb, and quite uncomfortably so.

Where are my addictions now to pull me through this harsh, blackened and juxtaposed mess? Where's my mom? God I know that's pathetic, but it's a trip to the woods of Lodi Township, or another reckless round of online dating and showing men my home videos. I've gotta do something to get my pens to work again.

Until I find a way out of this numbness without falling victim to vice, I'll aimlessly walk the streets and avenues avoiding eye contact with everyone who comes merrily in my way. I'll imagine robbing candy stores. I'll imagine shooting up with the crackies in allies. I'll imagine myself ignoring the flashing red hand at the other end of the intersection as my body floats right into traffic. As I said, I'll do anything to scrape off this ache and burn that surrounds me. If my imaginary means are painful and damaging, at least it's a distraction from first dates and childhood memories.