TheLegendsLeague

I Can’t Work Tonight
by Bryan Espiritu.
(I wrote this this morning while on my way home from LiveStock. It is a true recollection of one of my reoccuring bouts with schizophrenia while I was in high school. Thanks for reading.)

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Lori had left me and by the time I could make it down the gank, beiged hallway and down the stairs I had already soaked my chin hairs sparse with tears. Careful not to slip, I walked down the twenty-odd steps with grease between the treads of my work boots and pushed through the double emergency doors with the panes of plastic blinds covering them. Once they shut behind me there was no re-entering.

On my hands was blood, from tips to wrists and the pain of my chest was stringing my teeth. I couldn’t bare to look at them any longer. I walked quickly toward the tram stop, hoping one would be available for me to just hop onto and hide into, but there were none. Not a one. Not a soul could know how it felt that afternoon to see two children and a grown man devilishly demonize the bus towards the mall. And that poor woman with her ankles leaking blood from how tightly the straps had been wired around her lower leg - …

I am not dreaming, if dreams are built of clouds and lightly things. This is not a nightly scare or ‘mare’ since the lights from sunshine brings me glows. I have fell much further below. But today is the hello to my sanity’s goodbye, and I am sorry, I cannot work my shift tonight.

I rushed through the back greens and through the track to get to the hole in the fence on my way to work. I must have fucked 2 or 3 times that morning knowing how feisty I was those days. Mostly men of my age at that point would be gleaming to have had these sprees. Not me. Not under these circumstances or with these pills. Then, almost towards the pole that I would circle to get to the bus shelter, I looked and there my hands were covered red. My breathing shortened and my vision lengthened then closed like in old horror films. My hearing was dulled, my beating chest was heaving for breath. My hands were full. And the stench had me reeling. I boarded the bus and the demons came.

And so my eyes have never been the same.

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Welcome To TheLegendsLeague

One of the most open conversations I’ve had in a very long time happened last night with my homegirl cris. This is the dialogue exactly as it happened.

be:
I wish my parents had homes I could move into man.
I wish.

cris:
??

be:
So I could persue my shit properly.
I can’t afford my dreams and my rent and my bills.

cris:
I feel you.

be:
My mom lives with my cousins and their fam and my pops lives in someone’s basement.

cris:
I don’t know what to say, that just crushed me.

be:
??
Why

cris:
I believe you’ll never stop.

be:
I probably won’t.

cris:
I know
I don’t want you to either.

be:
I’m not sure what to do with this writing thing though.
I’m really scared…
about dying now that I don’t want to be dead.

When you’re suicidal you’re pretty fearless.
Because the end of your life would actually be quite fulfilling.
Now that I feel more recognition for my life I’m worried that I’ll die before I can do what needs to be done.

Don’t get me wrong, because this isn’t the romanticized version of thinking I’ll die young like all the greats. It’s the fear that time is actually against me.

I design clothing to fulfill a few aspects of my creative vision - as a designer and as someone who enjoys some of the fair vanities that come with making some money. But I also do it because I know it will provide me with money. Money to continue to write, and at some point, live without the burden of someone else’s clock.

cris:
You really have that fear? Do you still have those thoughts?
There is a reason you’re still here.
Many I’m sure of it.

be:
When the time comes that designing has paid me enough that I can live to write - I’m finished.
And I’ll feel my purpose has been served.

cris:
Look how far you’ve come with LL and Ideall as a whole.
Your determination and focus.
So many people feel you.

be:
But because there are steps to take - so many of them - before this all happens, I’m worried that I’ll pass before I can do what I’ve always dreamt of doing. And that’s writing this book.

cris:
I have no doubt in my mind that people will react the same to your writing.

Well why do you feel like that? Is it because you were suicidal? Or because you still are?
What is it in you that makes you feel that way?

be:
I’ve always felt like this.
I never thought I’d live passed my early 20’s.

cris:
I don’t think you’re done.
No where near done.

be:
I’m definitely not done. I’ll know when I am.
And it has everything to do with this book.

But I’m not suggesting that I’m suicidal and thinking of taking my own life.
I’m sure my life will just take itself away unannounced.

We’ll just have to see I guess.
…

thanks cris.