Why do I find peace in chaos?

It’s a gloomy summer still in August. Way passed “June Gloom”. I went on a walk today. One foot in front of the other. I was next to my mother. My dad and my brother, well, they weren’t home. They are pure. Unlike me and my mother. My brother goes to meet a friend to play tennis. My dad visits his friend’s dad; an old man he likes to keep company. The second they leave, believing my mother and I will make good choices, her and I watch out the window to make sure they drove off and away. Not much longer we have our walking shoes out and we are out the door. But no, we are not going out for a nice, summer walk. It’s gloomy anyway, so why not be gloomy ourselves? One end of our street has a post office, and the other side, a market. Our house is in the middle. Both places being a little over half a mile away. We head towards the market because the post office doesn’t sell booze. We wouldn’t have gone out to walk if we didn’t have a bottle to go home with as a reward. Tequila being the chosen trophy. We get to the market in a relaxed state. Ask the cashier for a bottle of tequila of which the brand name I don’t remember. My mom changes her mind, but not for the better. “Actually...”, she says. “I’ll take two and save is another trip.” We pick up a small container of ice cream and two large gatorades. The ice cream for me, and the two fruit punch gatorades for her because “she needs the electrolytes.” “What am I doing?”, I asked myself. Now I understand all those years she was watching me hurt myself and chose to enable me because she didn’t would rather me stay close and unhurt than to stop me and risk me shunning her. I kept my mouth shut, and wrongfully so. I need to learn how to say “no”. We go to pay. The cashier asks us if we need a bag. My mother declines and takes her designer backpack off and stuffs all of our “treats” into it. Nothing but her wallet and our mandatory masks were in there prior. She is too weak to carry this backpack now, so before she even tries to put it on her back, I put it on mine. She asked me if it was heavy. I told her no. I lied. We walk back home and now she’s in more of a hurry. Paranoid my dad or brother might beat us home, even though we logically knew that they both would be gone for hours. I now see behaviors in her that I saw in myself before. The mind of a paranoid addict is enough to drive a person mad. We get home, and as I knew, no one was there. As I knew, no one got home until hours after. I take the bottles and pour my mother a single drink and hide the bottles. She did not like this. I did not care. She felt betrayed. I did not care. The reality of her bad health and my no good enabling slapped me across the face. I explained to her why I decided to do this and that if she has a problem with it, I will have no choice but to tell my dad and brother about our little adventure. She did not like that. I did not care. She felt betrayed. I did not care. I told her I loved her too much to let her to destroy herself to death. She understood, thanked me, and gave me a hug. When the boys got home, we told them we went for a walk. They asked where we went. “To the post office and back”, I said.

It took me a long time to realize that you do not need to use big words to sound smart. Many times, I find myself reading stuff I wrote long ago only to think about how boring it sounds. Just because big words aren’t used to write a post or in your journal, does not mean that it doesn’t sound intelligent. If anything, more people will be more likely to read it because a more general population can understand and relate to it. Not that most people aren’t smart, but sometimes, even I was guilty of using a thesaurus to find words that might sound, what I know new recognize as pompous. Without having heard of them myself until looking them up. If I, myself, cannot understand a word I used years ago to write something, without having to go to a dictionary to look up what it means without it being obvious by what I was trying to say, then why should I expect everybody that might reading to enjoy it, yet alone understand? Even when I am reading posts or a script from from a book with words longer than the size of my pinky finger, I roll my eyes. I roll my eyes and get bored. Now, I have come to recognize that if something can be made to sound intelligent without the use of these huge words, that is even more brilliant. More beautiful. More relateable. Not that big words should never be used. That’s not the point of this. Sometimes there is no other word, but a long word, that exists to fit perfectly into what is trying to be said. But it is usually very noticeable when people use big words just to use them. Just to sound “smart” and better about themselves for knowing such a big word and how to spell it, when they most likely did what I used to do, which is to look it up anyway. I had an ex-boyfriend who did this. He wrote to impress only. What you write should be for you. From your heart. And if it so happens that it impresses the minds of others, then so be it. But it is an even bigger success if it touches them as opposed to impresses them. If what you write is touching others, that is what I consider impressive. And beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Sometimes something clichè is the only right thing to say.

In a second.

In a minute.

In an hour.

Tomorrow.

Just not right now.

Just not today.

-Things I say everyday

wake up shot

My high school class ring. On the inside, I had “I’m glad it’s over” engraved. 💙❄️💎🪁🧊💍