Here is a poem I wrote about addiction and the attempts at recovering from it. I tell people when necessary I never had an issue with drugs or alcohol, although I can understand their “pull” at someone in any type of pain. However, I must chose daily to resist and stay away from my own addictions if possible… Chaos was my drug of choice. It finds me in my weakest moments. I don’t need to show up at a dealer or wait for someone to come around with it, as it lives in my veins, in my nerves and in my flesh. It can come any night or day and depending on my state of mind can wrap me like a Chinese finger trap, no matter which way I pull… It’s there to hold me hostage. More recently I’m learning to relax as it’s the only way to release the trap. It doesn’t mean I don’t struggle or these thoughts don’t cross my mind. I simply tolerate the thoughts when they come and rather than fight them, I feel them. And then I tell them:

Why I Can Never Ever Do This Again, Not Even One More Time!

Pink Sugar Exposed

by: Roxanne Birth Nelson 

Enticing as it may seem, the addiction has always swallowed me whole. One sniff, one brush along the lips or body, could have me swigging from that fountain again. 

But oh my god. That fountain of glory. Its presence was bittersweet. My mouth and body couldn’t consume it fast enough. What a seducing aroma and the way that deliciousness danced on my tongue. 

I always think, “just this time, just once more”. 

But it’s never one. Once the flood gate is open, my entire self is engulfed in it. I can’t drink fast enough to get my fix. My days and nights blur together like one moment in time and I can smell it in my sweat as it leaves my body. It’s like glorious heaven sings rainbows of colors I feel like I’ve never experienced before. Just one more time. One more moment, one more breath of that sweet pink sugar could have me delighted like a school girl with a secret to tell. One more time. Oh my god. Bliss. 

But then, one more time comes spiraling hard at me. It’s taken me in, not the other way around. Shit. How did I get here again. How did I let this happen? Why did I even walk past the gate and let myself into the dark watering hole of chaos and pleasure.

Oh my 

oh my 

oh my GOD! 

She’s wrapped me up again, this bottle of beauty, like the wolf she devours me, and my whole self is stuck. 

Maybe when I’m wealthy I can just move far away where I can’t hurt anyone and just sit with this bottle and indulge in this magnificent lava that burns my throat but ignites my soul. For days without end I’ll stay tapped into the fountain, pouring it down and letting it fill me, and lying next to it until I feel the slightest tinge of emptiness, then fixing it with another sip and another and another. Oh my god, what a glorious mouthful this is. I’d inject it if I could, but I’d miss savoring every single drop. My frenum and lips feel raw, I cannot possibly get it in fast enough, my neck is sore from tilting it back, my groin is longing for this intoxicating vibration of amusement and stimulation. Oh my god. Let me have it all. 

Days turn into nights, I have no idea how much time I’ve lost, where does it end? 

Why can’t I just stay away? Steer clear? Just not make that last call or text,

“hey, thinking of you..” 

Of course I’m thinking of it! But why must I act? Why can’t I get it through my skull that this is just not good for me. 

“Hey, do you remember that time our lips shared that liquid and we kissed so passionately while it ran from the corners of our mouths and I lost myself in your eyes? I have never felt such fulfillment in my whole life before, or ever again after. Do you remember that? My whole body remembers it. It was like every cell in me knew that moment. Knew that sensation, knew that level of pure, unabridged bliss.” 

Oh my God, I’ve fallen in again?! 

This is it. This is the last time. I lose it. I just completely lash out. I break everything around me. “I Am DONE!” I declare. Never again! This was the last time! 

One more time. For the road.

God this pink sugar, how it lives in my mind, dances on my consciousness like a joyful heaven song. All of my 5 senses including a few extra are enlightened. 

This is it! One more time!One last time! I swear! 

this is it.

Just. 

This. 

One.

More. 

Time. 

Mmmm.. 

Today’s post is a poem I wrote after meeting several of the most delightful human beings I ever have been blessed to be around. They had plenty of identity… That which they chose. All of us have a choice. Why is it or should it be left to how we are born rather than to who we innately feel we are. Why do we ignore that which is on the inside in order to be what is on the outside? Steven Hawking always comes to mind when I think about someone who identifies by who they are not what they are. His strength through ALS inspired me to preservere while I was injured and contemplating suicide to release myself from the pain. Two favorite quotes from him are:

“I have noticed, even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.” 

 “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

I truly believe people adapt in their own way. We need to be less judgmental of it and let people identify where they will. Or accept people for who they are not what they are. Not to say we cannot question their motives or question as an attempt to understand it, but it is known that we cannot change another only ourselves. If the control we have is change within ourselves, why not change our perspective on others rather than try to force them into the mold of what we would like to see or believe? 

Without further ado:

Unidentified 

by: Roxanne Birth Nelson
I was born unable to see,

and without a gender identity.

My plain Barbie/Ken doll crotch 

gave me a blank space to botch.

And being without the awareness of the color of any skin,

I never had to argue or pick a side of what I thought about another’s melanin.

The “rule” books say it’s karma that caused me to be blind.

I say it’s been a blessing, I can leave that surface junk behind.

Was I so awful in my past life I got an extra “bit”?

To have gonads AND ovaries? Oh God, what humor, what wit!

You see ⬅️(how lucky), how it is to be me,

Of all your chains and stigmas, I’m free! 

I may have a tone to my flesh indeed, 

But fighting about it I have no need.

And for those of you battling sexual intent,

Imagine how blessed a world that needn’t repent.

You blame your belief on high philosophy,

But you trash our connectedness ignorantly.

If you close your eyes and ears and nose, and just embrace the facts;

You’ll notice we’re all one the same. 

It’s relating to IDENTITY where compassion truly lacks.

Sitting on a beach in Aruba watching the sunrise. The saltwater smells pungent. But the air is cleansing. The wisps of pink and orange rise slowly into the clouds and their fluffy pillowed shapes stagger across the sky as if being chased by God Himself. It seemed that only moments ago myself, a hungry crab and the ocean were alive in the dark of the night. The sun brings out magnificent things when it casts its rays onto the earth like a fishing rod into a pond. You can almost see the definition placed with exact precision; in its beginning, the sunrise and in its end, sunset. Once it’s bright light burrows past the shore line it becomes too blurry to see. Can this be what happens when we open our eyes? Our subconscious can no longer be so defined, once we are engulfed in the world, which causes a messy surrounding to disrupt our vision. We know what we should do, what needs to be done, yet we busy ourselves with getting through the day pace by pace or face by face. Sometimes distracted like the sun is with the clouds, the birds and the life forms around it, those that capture our attention but keep us from the goal. Alas another cycle of the day is gone, only somewhat accomplished. I’ve been present, I’ve shown my face, but have I shone through no matter the platform like the sun in the sky? Have I allowed the clouds and encountered life forms to dim my glow. Have I been at my brightest all day helping the dark and forgotten nooks to be included? Have I behaved in a way that would please others? My maker? Myself? Have I done what was expected/needed/appropriate of me today? And how can I possibly know? I can’t imagine the sun wakes up day after day and glides through the sky with all it encounters and makes decisions based upon them. I believe the sun just accepts that its role is to try to shine through. No matter the obstacles or events in the rest of the sky, the sun has only one job, and that is to try to be the light despite the darkness, to love us despite the sadness in the rain. The world is full of light and darkness, love and pain. God has made us each with a job, but you must decide for yourself if you want to be the glowing sun or the pouring rain.