Sensation Seeker

When I was a child I would stare into the inviting pit of darkness at the bottom of our stairs.
It made me afraid to look into mirrors. 
To sleep in my own bed.
To close my eyes.
Each night I would cocoon myself in my blanket.
Suffocating and perspiring due to the heat of it,
but I knew that if I didn't, 
the things that lay hidden in the dark would come for me.
Every night I would visit the stairs and everynight I would hold myself there, 
as long as my nerve would allow, 
just staring at it,
as it stared back.
.
The first boy I ever called boyfriend made me angry.
My parents made me angry. Kids at school made me angry. 
So angry I would grab at my clothes around the collar and pull while screaming.
So angry I wouldnt sleep
So angry it felt like hot vomit, needing to escape from my stomach.
So angry I would declare my hatred of the world in my private thoughts.
I would hold myself there in my anger as long as my nerve would allow,
just staring at it,
as it stared back.
.
I always prefered ecstacy to cocaine and both to marijuana.
Ecstacy would burn my face as I inhaled and break my hands out into an instantaions sweat.
I would feel the rush of chemical endorphines swirly around my blood stream 
and know that I was about to feel the greatest, fakest love known to this planet.
Cocaine sucked, I only ever used it to keep myself awake
or just for the sake of it, if we didn't have anything else.
I loved the haze of euphoria I felt at every touch, every whispered secret, every beat of drum and base.
Carrying me away.
I was using anti-depressants on top which only added to the elation.
I tried sniffing without it,
but it wasn't the same, 
for me anyway.
The little girl with dried up seritonin from all the years of staring into the darkness and feeling burnt with anger.
I would go into the toilet sometimes and look at myself,
braces on my teeth,
voices in my head,
bloody mucus sliding from my nostril,
and just stare at it,
as it stared back.
.
I split up with the boy who was meant to be 'the one'
It turns out he very much wasn't but I still reeled against the loss,
despite my significant part to play in it.
I galivanted across Europe, searching for arms to collapse into.
Instead I was met with the cold, hard ground.
Battered and bruised with the reality of being alone I chain smoked and drank.
People tried to look after me, take me in, like I was an abandoned puppy, 
but all I ended up doing was spilling my shame onto them.
I would return home in the morningd to new pajamas from my father and a freshly made bed which made me cry.
The fearalness of me was a facade.
I was a whirlwind of chaos.
People loved me for it.
Admired me for my honesty.
I tried to explain that my honesty wasn't intentional, I just couldn't hold it together anymore
and was too far gone to care.
Really I was a coward.
One night in munich I stared out of the hostel window, while everyone was asleep in their bunks.
The city lights were very bright as I stared,
and they stared right back at me.
.
He asked me once if I ever listend to happy music or read happy things.
It made me frustrated.
No I don't. 
I only listen to things that make me feel something.
Don't you feel happy? He asks.
Such an unintented confrontation.
Everyone else I had ever know had met me in the unrelenting melancholy of life.
Shared some form of self harm and pull to stare into the darkness.
Except for him.
He liked things that made him feel happy.
A feeling I wasn't comfortable with.
A feeling I didn't trust.
A feeling I wasn't aware truly existed.
.
I have always chased sensations of the sordid kind. 
Or the sad variety.
The sinking type.
But over the last 3 years I have spent every ounce of strength into feeling the amplitude of happiness.
Not the fake kind I used to sniff.
And not the destructive kind I felt in being angry or desired.
But the warm kind.
The safe kind.
The stable kind.
And actually I used to think happiness was fleeting or of one shade.
But it's actually one of the most multidimensional of all the feeliings I have come to taste.
It is only now that I see the flat, trapping, transparent nature of sadness, anger or shame.
They are not solid. Or sturdy.
They are not to be relied upon.
They are not places to live.
.
Right now I stare into the sunshine
Into the azure sky 
into the turquoise waters
into the viridescent mountain tops
into the emerald eyes of my person
The real 'one'
And they smile back at me.