for you, wherever you maybe i just hope that you, someday, make it back to me.
stop trying to validate your existence when i thank god for braiding you by hand. you keep saying, “i’m nothing important, just trying to find my purpose, working my way out of quicksand.”
but you don’t need to turn every hobby into a side hustle. that’s not purpose, that’s pressure. and pressure, when left unchecked, becomes sickness at any measure. i get it- money is the motive, hustle culture is real and it’s praised, but what happens when your body breaks beneath the weight? when it becomes corrosive, sleep deprived?
in this moment we’re young and hungry. i know you want a future free of debt, one where you can breathe and your kids are set. but what if breathing was never supposed to be postponed? what if this life, just living ,was the point all along? is that not enough for you, or is financial tunnel vision the only thing you feel safe enough to pursue?
i wish you could see yourself the way i do. a man who works too hard, a man who needs, more than anything, to slow down and subdue. maybe the quicksand you speak of is of your own making: the liquor you lean on daily, it's not a rope, it’s an anchor that’s slowly yanking. and still, you keep sinking, convinced this is survival rather than realizing that the damage is final.
i’m not judging you. god knows i’m not. i just thought you were the kind of man who could prioritize, who could hold joy in one hand and duty in the other for the sake of love and living being the prize. but maybe your ties to suffering run deeper than your ties to healing, and asking you to sober up feels like asking you to let go of what’s destructively self- fulfilling.
when did your sobriety first come into question? actually- never mind. you don’t owe me that. i’m not the one to stage an intervention or tell you what you need to work at. but curiosity kills, and I think i’ve already died a little trying to understand the version of you that runs uphill with bricks in his backpack and still thinks it’s noble to remain so focal.
i love you
but your lifestyle is… hypnotic. work. then work some more. end up at a bar. take a hit of something that makes your chest go quiet and then stick, the rest of the evening, to a hard liquor diet. something that tricks you into thinking the chaos has left your body. you call it coping. i call it turning into an absolute nobody.
you have dreams: you speak of buying a house, building routines, creating something stable. but do your dreams include healing or just picking out living room coffee tables? boundaries or drunkenly saying “I do”? grieving the things you never gave yourself a chance to actually do? is that anywhere on your five-year plan because i think it should be. i think it needs to be, for the mere reason that most people see. you’re losing yourself to the hazy routine, absent mindedly.
and maybe, selfishly, i wonder if i’m there too. somewhere in the blueprint, maybe just a line item or two. a post-it on your fridge, a piece of your puzzle that doesn’t quite fit but still refuses to fall off the table because she just wants to help you be stable.
ah no, of course not. how could i forget? you aren’t in charge of your five-year plan, not really, not when your sobriety is unmet. not when the long hours and long pours matter more than long-term anythings and evermores. but until you decide that your life is worth more than long hours at work and late night liquor-soaked clarity, i’ll keep loving you and loosing you from a distance, while you keep working yourself toward your tomb drenched in sweat, alcohol, and irrefutable verity.
