Yayo, yes, you

I am the most well-behaved, vicious, loving, poisoned angel you have ever met.

“I like the snake on your tattoo, I like the ivy and the ink blue.”

What happens to those who linger in the gardens of pleasure and oblivion, but never join the romanticised misunderstood martyrs? Anyone who has ever leaned over the soft edge of temptation knows how unthankful it can be to turn away. First, you must have something to turn back to.

Humans reach for whatever blurs the edges of our worlds, be it sex, pills, powders, attention, money, or violence. A mixture at best (or worst?). The world keeps insisting on your salvation, telling you that you must “choose life”, as if a person can abandon this dance. They tell you you are saving yourself, but miss the point of actually saving everyone else instead. They say “this is great for you”, as if that means more than pleasure. Maybe it does for some. (I guess this is the second point of unthankfulness).

In the same breath, they glorify people who burned themselves out young, painting undeniable romance of their chaos, making it sacred. “Oh, they were so special. What tortured worlds inside them”. And I spend so much of my fucking precious time wondering how many of these people chose to silence their passions and now stand quietly in grocery store lines right beside you. Why does no one marvel at their restraint, at the fire swallowed instead of setting one free? The survival is invisible while self-destruction becomes an altar, because you are only as praised as close to death you arrive. I rage at this hypocrisy. I want to become immortal too. Self-destruction happens when one denies it as well. Destruction can bloom from denying it, too.

“Hello, heaven, you are a tunnel lined with yellow lights
On a dark night”

When you have tasted something sweeter than survival, whether in the form of a high, a touch, or a night, reason no longer feels like a language you were born to speak. But some people carry huge storms under their skin. Some of us did choose life, cutting ourselves loose from the small paradises we once belonged to, and for that, we abandoned the myth.

And this world still pretends it condemns indulgence, yet sings about it constantly. Makes art about it. Makes movies about it. There is envy of those who let themselves fall without disguise and who ruin themselves openly. Those who do not hide how much they love disappearing. Our society loves these people and hates them at the same time. We love to believe we do not care what others think, but being human is being a mirror. Every addiction is a (weak) reaction to reality, a new language created to fight it. And I despise it, precisely because I understand it. The deep understanding actually makes my hatred burn even more.

And I also understand my fixation on immortality of pleasure, on tasting the forbidden, on carving my name onto something that will last longer than my lifetime routines. There is, in my mind, living and leaving. My close friend told me yesterday how legacy is meaningless to you after you die, and I am still trying to understand why my mind riots against this idea. I am aware life is all we have, I am aware of how precious it is, how everything comes and goes from it. I still fear dissolving into silence while I still have so much to say. The life being sold to us does not give us much time to listen, to indulge, and to create.

My passion is the strongest thing I have ever experienced. I am afraid that no matter how much I write, my devotion to this energy will not translate. My obsession with this force will not be understood. The force inside of me is struggling to find true form. I, as much as anyone else, find fear in the middle of the night, and would give up on anything for a single witness. Maybe if I am not in the room anymore, curiosity will find itself in the labyrinth of my pride and ego and fear, and discover the madness I try to offer while I am here.

Passion is my oldest fixation, often dressed up as intimacy or meaning. I know this is a door to oblivion disguised as passion. It is a blackout disguised as passion, but it is still my peace. We push the idea of it while also longing for stability, a routine, a life with calendars and alarms.

Contradiction tastes bitter on Sunday mornings like this when I hear the birds, and I make myself coffee with my cats cuddling beneath my feet. The sunlight hits my face, and I desire a calm life, a family, a community purpose. Trust.

But I do not just observe the abyss, I think and scream and paint and write about it all the time. I take quiet sips when no one is looking. My most important rituals that I keep hidden, a private cup of tea with my own demons and angels. Both of them are present. I judge the ones that do it openly, I argue with them, I am triggered and disgusted because they remind me of the truth. I stand in my light publicly. It is hard to explain the part of me that firmly believed I was meant to burn brightly and briefly, that a long life felt like an unnatural demand. And I chose life, I did. I am behaving. But just like when you are traveling and speaking another language, you still know your own, and I am aware of mine. It is hunger and heat. It is yayo. Yes, you.

“There is a house in New Orleans
they call the Rising Sun
and it’s been the ruin for many poor girls
and me, oh God, for one,

I’m going back to New Orleans,
my race is almost run,
I’m going back to spend my life
beneath that Rising Sun”