and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to kill himself in grade ten
when a kid who still had his mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit
to this day
he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it’s about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can’t understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity
we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell”
An excerpt of the poem To This Day by Shane Koyczan.
From the book Our Deathbeds Will Be Thirsty.
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON DREAMS IS LOSING ONE’S TEETH, WHICH REPRESENTS EMBARRASSMENT, FEAR, SHAME, ABANDONMENT, AND FEELINGS OF POWERLESSNESS. A PARALLEL WAKING EXPERIENCE CAN BE FOUND IN THE PHRASE losing face.
I hated everything about alcohol—the smell, the way it changed people, and how insidiously it crept into my life. I had watched as it slowly destroyed the relationships in my family, like a cancer carving its way through our bodies.
My brother drank a lot, and would come into our room reeking of beer. I never understood how people smelled like alcohol; if I drank a gallon of milk, did I smell like a cow? He came into the room with bright, demonic eyes, excited, dizzy, energetic, and drunk. His drinking worried me, and I feared something terrible would happen. One night that fear turned into reality when he got into an awful accident. He wrapped his car around a tree so badly that its metal frame twisted around his body, locking him into a steel grave. He was rescued by the Jaws of Life and brought to the intensive care unit. When I heard the news, I was filled with fear. Was he going to be all right? Was he going to die? After a long time in the hospital and a few surgeries, he recovered, but the accident didn’t change his behavior. Like many of us, he continued to believe he was immortal.
My mom also drank a lot, but it affected her differently than my brother. She didn’t get the same energy as him, and seemed to be sliding down a hole, taking all light down with her into Hades’ lair of endless repetition. Her life cycled around finishing the drink and filling it back up for that defined “fulfillment.”
I hated alcohol.
I was determined never to drink, because I had seen and lived through the destruction it caused and, bottom line, it would ruin my gymnastics. I had seen older kids start drinking and watched how alcohol slowly destroyed the athlete they could have become. I was not going to let that happen to me. I was afraid of losing my physical control that I had worked so hard to achieve.
In my sophomore year, everyone in school started experimenting with alcohol and pot, including my closest friend Tara. She came over to my house on weekends with her friends to drink. I had the house to myself until two in the morning since my mom was always at work, so it became the “drinking house.” I had learned from my sisters to clean the house so it looked better than it did before Mom left, and she would never suspect a thing. Our family adage, “If no one saw it, then it didn’t occur,” was in full effect. I watched my friends get drunk, laugh, and dance, and then cleaned up after them.
After months of being the perfect human specimen, always on the outside of my friends’ world and always eating properly, working out, caring for everyone, and cleaning up after them, I decided to have a beer with them. I drank it as fast as I could because it tasted so awful. Everyone told me the first one always tasted bad, but the second one would taste better. I didn’t feel anything after the first beer, but
