white chalky pills spilling from my mouth
and cursing god as I slam my hands against the ground
do you hear me
as I beg for an answer within myself
through the sobs?
and how I try to evoke reason
from the scorched flesh on my thigh?
I want to beg your forgiveness
for finding your phone number on my finger tips
at the bottom of a bottle of wine
I never wanted to be a bother to you
Posted Apr 29, 2019, 12:53 AM UTC · edited
Substance abuse that is done with awareness is one of the saddest things that I think many people can relate to. They don't want to be the way that they are...but they are. They feel helpless, and they know it hurts those around them, but they feel like they can't do anything about it.
What intrigues me most, is why the speaker is calling.
Are they calling for help? For someone to please get them out of the hell they're in, and the sorrow is in needing to involve that person at all?
Or are they calling for another reason? For love, for companionship? and the regret lies in that they know the pain they bring this other person during even the most mundane of interactions, and the selfishness they feel in making this contact?
Whatever the reason may be, it resonates with many, many people.
this is very powerful! I like the idea of "apologizing" to god, the anger is so evident and potent. finding god at "the bottom of a bottle" is one that i've heard before, but the word choice makes it sound different. I just wish it wasn't so short! good job!
"I never wanted to be a bother to you" surely says more than the statement itself; i think it suggests the apology is for a person who is a crush? Unrequited love? Somehow implying there was never a chance?
If this were a full relationship, you'd think the narrator would want to be "a bother" because he/she'd want them to value their time and feelings.
So it makes me wonder about the motivation of the substance abuse here: is it the reason for the apology? Is it a coping mechanism for a transgression? Is it self-pity (this is the one I am trending towards)?
Is there a correlation between the types of self-harm and the narrator's inquisitions?
I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the polite title and the raw, discordant body of the work.
That being said, this invoked something in me that I am having significant difficulty naming. (So much that I've lost count of how many times I've rewritten this comment)
My rudimentary interpretation was that this is from the perspective of a person who is... (for lack of a better term) drowning.
We drink, we do drugs, we self harm - we do anything other than take the chance of involving another person, even if we so desperately want to engage with them. We'll just burden them with our baggage. We'll just bring them down with us. We're just a burden. Nothing but a burden. Somehow, for some inexplicable reason, that's what we convince ourselves. So we go it alone.
As a parting thought: I wondered if there was an actual misdeed between the subject and the other person they wanted forgiveness from. I ask this because sometimes it's difficult to distinguish between our wrongdoings actually based in reality from the insidious internal dialogue in our minds dragging us down.