Heaven Belongs to You

 

As I sat on the train sobbing and sipping a White Claw I thought of my friend who killed himself after we graduated from high school. He couldn’t handle the opiate withdrawals, the sinking feeling when you’ve run out and you don’t have any cash to buy more, the delusions that this fear, sadness, sweat and vomit are never going to end, the panic from knowing you don’t have anyone to hold onto anymore because they’re all out getting high and wanting to die. I get it. I’m in the same spot. We tried so hard to run from the ones who hurt us we ended up abusing our bodies and our minds as if to prove no one could ever damage us. We do a fine enough job of that on our own. I think of Mac Miller, swimming in circles. 

We don’t just want to get high. We want to disappear. It takes a while for that feeling to fade because we’re addicts. We’ve overwhelmed our systems with so much dopamine and serotonin it takes a long while to feel like a human again even when our piss is clean. We’ve pushed away enough people to convince ourselves that we’re going through this alone and that we always will, and that’s enough to push us to keep using because what else do we have to lose? That fear of not only surviving the withdrawal process, but going through it alone had me thinking my only source of salvation was to jump off a bridge or in front of a subway car. But I didn’t, I won’t, at least not yet. Energy doesn’t die it only changes forms. I don’t want to carry this profound sadness and manic fear with me into whatever realm I enter into when my body calls it quits. I’ve spent my whole life carrying around these heavy feelings. I let them dictate my life. For so long I felt like my body was a vessel for my negative feelings. I let them course through my veins and come out of my mouth until they were eating me alive and tearing a path through the lives of those that I love.

When it’s my turn to go to the grave I deserve to rest easy. If that means I’ll spend my life battling demons then I will do it, knowing that I’m doing it for you and everyone else who didn’t think they were strong enough. In life, you felt alone. In death, you have more friends that will hold shit down than you ever could have hoped for. In a field of bodies that have crumpled under the weight of drug addiction and severe depression, I will fight for you, and I won’t stop until I get to the morgue at 90 years old and my autopsy says I died of natural causes. Now, the only suicide I’m thinking about is the doors on my Lambo. 

I’m not done holding onto the sadness and fear. I know that pains you because some of it is yours. But each day I stay sober the closer I get to heaven, to you, to redemption, to rebirth, to the freedom we craved when we were 17. Hold onto me tightly. Stay with me. I’ll carry you home.