Wonderland

I see you. You don't think I can but I do. Your pale hazel eyes are rimmed with salty regrets. Your auburn hair slick with oil and so intricately tangled that Alice herself could not navigate her way out of that wonderland. You're ill darling. Let us help you. But denial and acceptance rage relentlessly inside your body. The innate instinct to preserve your very existence is screaming for recognition inside even your smallest capillary. But denial has burrowed a hole inside your head and has nested there next to your cerebrum. He's feeding off of gray and white matter, whispering sweet nothings and telling you it's okay to let go. Injecting a powerful hallucination serum into your head and creating romantic fantasies about what dying truly is. Denial has another name, his friends call him Al. Al comes in bottles and bags and even boxes. He'll give you a good time but he's not free. Pay the piper he says. He'll accept payments in forms of youth, health, sanity, and happiness. Once he enters your blood stream you feel release and ascend to a place where reason and logic cannot trouble you. But gravity, lucidity, whatever you may call it, is gently tugging on your heart, extending an olive branch of sorts. Come back to the ground, to the earth, to the soil. Furrow your toes deep into the chilled, powdery, dirt. Root yourself here with me because darling I know how Al helps you escape. I know it's hard to submerge yourself in the icy waters of assent, but that is the only way to breach with a renewed sense of rehabilitation.

The human body is only capable of combating so much intoxication at once. You flourish under the pretense of existing in a world where you don't have to acknowledge the despair you wallowed in before the depressant kicked in. But when the hour of sobriety dawns upon your meager cowardice, it's time to ingest an unholy amount of acetaminophen and prepare to engage the barrage of afflictions that is the human life. Annulling Al is imperative, but who can resist the kind of freedom he provides? Ever since our childhoods we have been taught that it's ok to pretend and that pretending is a fun game to play. Of course there is always a point where a chiding parental figure encourages the cessation of these games. However, once one dabbles in these for a bit more than not much and a bit less than too much, they become a life-long reality. You know this. This is your reality. But for some irrational reason, you think that your reality is as opaque as a brick wall to outsiders looking in. Or maybe you're just telling yourself that.

I wish you had never gone down that dark, musty hole. In chasing after Al, you ran away from responsibility and from sanity. But maybe, just maybe, what they say might be true after all.

All the best people do.