chasing wildfires: the journey of loving an addict

by Jessica Jocelyn

this love isn’t for the faint of heart and my body isn’t for the weak-minded. I require you to step away from the shallow end and swim deep in these waters.

your love tastes like fire and burns like ice. it smells like old childhood memories: tender yet distant, familiar yet unknown.

let my demons speak to yours. palm to palm. nose to nose. watch them weave through our rib cages. carving our names deep into the bones so that if someone else comes searching for our hearts they’d find who ventured there first.

I am so very different from you wearing my heart on my sleeve using different colored pins to secure it there. if I cry, I take my time making sure not one drop is forgotten. feelings flow freely from my lips, from the sweetest smiles to the ugliest screams. you can bury things deep, sewing it under your skin, intricate stitching so skilled it becomes invisible. you refuse to see any of your scars, waving hurt feelings away like an annoying insect buzzing too close. how jealous I am of you

we are so young, when we turn around and realize we have grown old, I hope we still find reasons to get matching tattoos or go swimming at night and be terrified of what’s in the water. I hope we find beauty in our wrinkles that remind us of our journey. I hope we still go on long aimless car rides and find comfort in the fact that we always return home together.

boys are born into this world and we rip emotion from them, as easy as plucking petals from a flower. we don’t let them be soft, convince them it’s a weakness. damaged little boys turn into incomplete men. girls are born into this world to weak parents who fail them. they fall for the first one to tell them they’re beautiful, learn to use their body as a weapon. broken little girls turn into destructive women.

the first night it entered your body, it wasn’t just you who was forever changed. - undertow

you prepare to go to war but the battle was never truly with me. it was only a distraction from the wars inside your soul.

in between storms there are moments of calm. the sun shines through the clouds and you come back to us. we laugh and we play and squeeze every moment we can until we see the next storm on the horizon coming to take you away.

how can I possibly explain to my heart that you no longer exist, when my eyes tell my brain you are standing right in front of me

you promised non-contention but I kept discovering the lies you would sweetly sneak into the songs you sang to put me to sleep. I was starving for truths, no matter how bitter they tasted, for truths could not be as awful as the thoughts my mind fits into the blank spaces that need to be filled. and after you left I dreamt of all the monsters you left behind under our bed.

by now I know it’s my fault since I trust in promises and not patterns. the epiphany, the moment, my heart and my brain aligned when my gut had been right all along.

you watch as I go up in flames and burn well into the night, but by now I have taught you that this fire keeps you warm, so you add another log.

I became so used to being a main character in your story that I couldn’t comprehend how I was being written off the script. at the end of the day, it all comes down to choice, and I was no longer chosen. I was a foot note, an afterthought, picked last for the team.

I had grown quite accustomed to the way your eyes changed colors with the trees. I’m not sure how to accept that they just don’t do that anymore.

we sit in the dark with only the moon to illuminate our faces. I can almost pretend that I still know you. I will stay up all night just to experience the illusion, relishing the past before the sun comes bursting through revealing a stranger next to me that used to resemble all that I knew about love.

how devastatingly beautiful it is to have the same person show you both what love is and what love isn’t.

stop me when I try to walk away. please beg me to stay, tell me it’s me you’re choosing, say you didn’t mean it and lead me to bed so when we wake up from it all it will have just been a bad dream. say we are still that young boy and girl, hungry in love, and not two lost souls who suddenly found themselves much older and decaying.

you cut me open to view my insides and are disappointed to find that I am made of blood and flesh and bones. fragile things that can be easily bruised. you command I change to brick and mortar so I can’t be easily swayed by the force of your storms, to stay shiny and new and not reflect the damage you’ve done. to paint my face with a smile so it’s not hard to look at me and to be easily digestible when you try to swallow me whole.

I held the life I built in my hands and squeezed until it pushed through my fingers. I mourned its loss while diving deep into anger, denial, bargaining, acceptance. the sadness came last. I fear it might never leave

I wanted to scream at every flower in bloom and curse at every star that came out to shine. couldn’t they tell that they needed to pause and mourn with me? I didn’t want to be in this alone.

we went out like a supernova, our explosion in death was magnificent as we dissipated into ash and ended in darkness, far from how we started.

our minds were messy, crowded with weeds of bad thoughts and overgrown with foliage made of dark words. in my struggle I became just as toxic as you. my hands bled as I dug deep into the earth to remove the unwanted flora rotting in my head.

I was so terrified of the pain I would experience from missing you, but I realized it was no different than what I was feeling while you were in the same room.

I had to gently walk my heart through the process of accepting what my mind already had: that you were fighting against me and not fighting for me, that I was begging you to stay and you were pleading to go. it took realizing this to let you go. I know you are still in there somewhere and if that part still loves me, please don’t ever let me know.

if they ever ask, tell them it was like pulling wings off a butterfly. no matter how many times you tried to remove the flowers I planted in the backyard, they always come back to haunt you every spring. - trying to forget me

you don’t need to tell them what you were. they already know. they know you were there staying longer than you should’ve, lingering like the final stars before sunrise, so afraid of the night ending and closing a chapter to that day. they know you were sunshine they stubbornly shut out, refusing to grow in your warmth and light. they know now that all that energy turned inward, and that made you the strongest tree in the forest, the most beautiful wildflower in the field. now that you drink from your own cup instead of pouring it into someone’s mouth who refused to swallow. you don’t need to tell them what you were. they already know even if they never end up telling you.

pay attention to when you are lying on the floor in broken pieces and the people who walk on by because they are scared to be cut by the shards of your brokenness. pay extra attention to the ones who stop to simply sit with you in the darkness and hand you gloves because they know how to put everything back together.

my pain more than ripped me open. it reached inside, pulled my flesh from the bone, and became all that I ate and breathed. it lodged like a bullet to the brain and when it was done teaching me, molding me, changing me, I asked it to leave. with hands of a skilled surgeon, I reached inside and released all that was no longer serving me.

sometimes our greatest moments don’t happen during the light of day, but more like the lotus flower that blooms at night. surrounded by darkness, and only the light of the moon, the darkness is where we thrive darkness is where we rise. this is our forever war and we’ll never stop fighting

I have accepted that my life is broken into many chapters. some chapters are so easy to read and filled with love and sweet mementos. other chapters are harder to follow, with most of the words scribbled in anger and tears smearing the ink. some chapters I want to press to my lips and breathe them in, others I want to rip out and set on fire, but each has helped build me.