[REHAB POP] STEP 1: Admit You Have A Problem (Music by Phil Good, Whethan, VHS Collection + Alyss)
STEP 1: ADMIT YOU HAVE A PROBLEM
I’d had it with myself. I’d silenced the world around me many times. Wandered off into a wistful wanderlust of woe and a woeful lack of people. To survive. Was kind of my jam. Orphan children owe the world nothing. It dares to demand things despite a daring deficit of love. And we’d been our own Cheerleaders. Critics. Arms to run into. Hands to slap our faces. We have to, no one else will. And we know it. It wakes us up to life, screws us up. To say I needed my own voice is thirsty as fuck, primo understatement. I’d never lived without hearing me. I could shout to myself, follow the echo out of any darkness. And I’d had reason to hate myself, so many times. Much like anyone you spend all those years with. Resentment, a resounding get the fuck outta bed settles in until it doesn’t anymore. But I knew the value of me, if only because I’m all I have. So when I stopped talking to myself–and not just for a week, but nine–I knew I had to ADMIT I HAD A PROBLEM.
I LIKE TO THINK THAT I’M A GOOD MAN
I STRIVE TO BE THE BEST THAT I CAN
SO INCOMPLETE WITHOUT EMOTION
MAYBE WE’LL REDEFINE THE MOTIONS
BEFORE WE’RE SWALLOWED BY THE OCEANS
And I was, as Phil Good puts it, sedated. I was sleeping in, rather than hearing hours and hours of ‘holy fuck no, have a seat. you don’t have a heart no mo‘. Hits that came from inside my head. Waking up was boring, because I had nothing to say to me. And I know other humans do this. Live their whole life having a conniption fit, in fear of having a half-hour inside their head. And they exist, happy, never knowing who they are. Everything they need is out there. Half a metre out of the quarter hemispheric arc their hands can swing in front of them.
MY HEAD BLOWS UP WHEN I’M ALONE
INSIDE OUT, I MIGHT EXPLODE
I SHUT MY EYES AND MY MOUTH
AND MY LEGS JUST GAVE OUT
WHY IN THE WORLD
WOULD YOU HIT ME WHEN I’M DOWN?
Most humans don’t have hours-long conversations with themselves. I get it. But I do. Most humans don’t plan sleepovers, pizza and shitty movies and comfy socks to hash out a heap of heartache with their own heart. But I do. You know when you see something that’s like ‘holy shit. i have to tell someone about this’ You know who I want to tell first? Me. I get why I’m laughing like a motherfucker; or seething, shaking straddled across my strewn about sofa cushions. I don’t have to explain. I know exactly why I do everything. And I don’t have to wait, see, and hope I don’t watch ‘ah, shit, dude’s crazy’ register across my face. Or disappointment, disinterest. All the apathy. I don’t care if you approve. I’m gonna feel what I’m gonna feel at this point in my life. But it severely hinders heaping a half percent of my heart in the hand of any human when I’m being viciously hit in the face by the world. When I’m down and I can’t get up, I need help. I do, you know, sometimes. I’m no fucking hero.
WE ARE YOUNG
AND WE’VE GONE MAD
WE ARE ALONE, LONE, LONE
NOT WISHING YOU WERE COMING BACK
AND WE RUN WHEN THINGS GET BAD
I CAN’T MAKE IT, I CAN’T TAKE IT
I HAVE LOST CONTROL
And I hid out from myself for 9 weeks. To say it hurt is that primo understatement from before being bitch slapped by Mr. Captain Obvious As Fuck. And so I thought of this series on Rehab Pop, modeled on the 12 Steps, to getting you, myself, and others to healing, having a care if you have a word, an expletive, a string of ‘holy, holy i love lifes’ that you ever want to hear coming out your head hole again.
TAKE ME TO ANOTHER PLACE
WHERE THE STARS WON’T LEAVE ME SIDEWAYS
THIS SHIT ISN’T EVEN REAL
WHEN YOU LOOK RIGHT, LOOK RIGHT UP CLOSE
94