the end that never came in poetry

you can spend your entire life
steeling yourself for disaster
but if disaster never comes
then your time lost was the disaster

disaster comes or it doesn’t
you roll with it or you don’t
spinning one’s wheels in worry
doesn’t accomplish a damn
other than worrying
other than getting more practice in worry
other than making your worry more ingrained
other than making it harder to stop worrying later

you ask me why I don’t seem worried?
well, that’s my secret, Captain
I’m always worried and
I’ve spent my life squashing it out
trying to make a baseline of it
trying to discount it as background noise
trying to cancel it out with pop culture trifles
and wordplay and sexual fantasy and what ifs
I’m so worried that I’ve come to accept
that worrying is terrible and useless
and I’ve made myself
willfully absent-minded
to try and blot out the pain

because you see, worry’s an addiction
worry is just like drinking
at first a little bit of worry goes a long way
you feel like you control the world through worry
then you need to worry a little more and a little more
pretty soon you can’t leave the house to go to the store
because you need to worry so much to fill that hole
you need to worry so much more to stay in control
it’s like a crutch
that becomes a tolerance
that becomes a dependence
that becomes an addiction

so I take it one day at a time
you control your head I’ll control mine
and I’ll force myself to be distractable
to try and not be just a dry-drunk
abstaining from worry without really recovering
this is what I’m discovering
worrying about disaster is a drug
a bitter pill that I don’t want any more of