An Honest Appraisal

I have spent most of my life making payments toward complacency through drugs and alcohol. The life of my childhood that provided my last truly happy moments has left me like a disgusted lover, while I was lost in a host of mind altering chemicals. As I crawl out from what I now view to be a pretty shameful decade, I realize I have nothing. The only thing more terrifying than the pain of yesterday is the uncertainty of tomorrow. I stand, feeling completely alone. at a point where tomorrow can be whatever I want it to be. In spite of this, I have so little faith in myself to succeed that I feel I might as well just give up now. When I wake up in the morning I get on my knees and pray for something better. I pray for the strength to be someone who can shine brightly on the lives of those around him. People always tell me what a good person I am, what a good heart I have. This is the only way I know how to be, but to be honest, I feel all it has ever gotten me is shit upon. Girls, employers, you name it, have all taken advantage of this supposedly positive quality and turned it into some real bad days for yours truly. In the midst of my despair I am afforded the clarity of thought to realize I can no longer deal with these feelings in the way I always have. I can no longer swallow, sniff, smoke and shoot them away. We all know where that leads for me, and in truth it stopped working a while ago anyway. So I fill my days with activities that I should enjoy but don't, in hopes that when my mind settles upon me once again I will see something more in myself. I don't yet. I try not to be ungrateful for the gifts I have, I'd like to use them to someones benefit if not my own. The things that I let define me for so long no longer exist to me and I am finding, to my horror, that I am no one. I anxiously wonder, contemplating on which wall I'd like to scribe my future and with which media I should write. Endless potential can be a curse to the indecisive. My limbs feel weighted by my limitations. The people and things I involuntarily wake up yearning for, the objects of my obsession, are the very things that have hurt me so much in my past. I hate myself for still wanting them. It is truly difficult when your own thoughts are not trustworthy and blind faith is the only promising solution. I am fortunate to know that this loneliness I feel is a figment of a broken self image, but with this realization comes guilt that I cannot deliver the person my supporters are cheering for. Only a scared shell of a human being, impatiently fighting to get through another day doing the right thing. I have lied to myself for so long that I don't even buy my bullshit anymore, I have banished all my co-signers to their respective vices. What I am left with is nothing but, what I feel to be, pure truth. It is enough to drive me to drink, funny how that works isn't it?