RISK EVERYTHING FEAR NOTHING

used to hold my head in my own loose grip, reciting ammonio methacrylate copolymer, hypromellose, lactose, magnesium stearate…

at night, when the candles in our room blew out and you wouldn’t let me relight them, when i stopped in the middle of the good part of every book i ever read, your fingers trailing down my sides in the half-sleep of the sin we shared together, the nights we sweat through relentlessly, the ache we felt insistently - i used to think, quietly - polyethylene glycol 400, povidone, sodium hydroxide, sorbic acid, stearyl alcohol…

and in the cold breath of morning, with the dewy coming of dawn, days after they have lowered you into the ground, after your mother has struggled silently to take in the fresh tracks dotting your arm, after your sister asks me loudly to look at what i’ve done, i sit with the last cigarette i will ever smoke, thinking - talc, titanium dioxide, and triacetin.

how good these words taste - all the chemicals i need to sleep away a memory, syllables as sweet as the drug they make up - as beautiful as the sound of my breaths, as painless as the shock of your passing, as gripping as the days without you, now; every one of them slow, and dark, and sad.

Anonymous

Down, down, down, I can feel you falling.

Bite your lip and hold your tongue, pull it together, suck it up, smile, always smile, distract yourself from the edging thoughts at the back of your head, and go. The show must go on.

There’s always gonna be bad shit out there. No matter where you go, who you are, or what you do. That’ the game of life for ya. But here’s the amazing thing - light triumphs over darkness. Every time.
You can stick a candle into the dark, but you can’t stick the dark into the light.

You will do what you have to do to get through this. People deal with things their own way, end of story. Letting go is a gradual process. We heal, often without even knowing it. Even if you don’t realize you’re moving on with your life, it happens. And I think the hardest lesson we have to learn is this: sometimes people won’t stay in our lives, for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean they don’t stay in our hearts. Whichever path you take from here, I pray you never stop seeing all the love surrounding you.

You control which direction you go. If you wanna go up, you will, and if times get tough, never forget my hand to pull you back up, and remind you who you really are.

It’s funny, I let strangers read about my life, but I keep secrets from my closest friends. Whatever, I write to express, not impress.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time. More degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, and watch TV too much.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, yet still have trouble crossing the street to meet our new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait; have higher incomes, but lower morals; more food, and less appeasement. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less and less communication. We’ve become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short characters; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more food, and less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. Of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology has brought this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or just to hit delete…

- Dr. Bob Moorehead