The Blood Red Leaves Are Sanity...

I climbed up this beautiful tree…the branches protecting me and helping me up to the top. The leaves a dazzling blood red…I watched the sunset with an explosion of colors, all of which surrounded me and hugged my soul. But then I recognized that funny smell…the one that had been bothering me the whole time. GASOLINE. I looked down, as the darkness started to choke my heart…there below me was a darkened figure…who had just struck a match and threw it up into my mind…the explosion festered into a plague that destroyed the entire landscape around my tree. I was left with ashes and a sky with no stars…but I could hear the darkness laughing. For the darkness always finds me…no matter what tree I climb, no matter how far and long I run away. No matter how beautiful everything around me is, and no matter how happy I think I am with what I'm experiencing…I always smell the Gasoline.  

I can never fully enjoy the smile on my face. I can't grasp the rarity of the laughter that escapes me in its hypnotic song. I can't dance with joy, knowing full and well that the floor I'm twirling on will soon disappear…It's a strange experience…feeling happier than you have ever felt in your entire life..and then having it all go away in the blink of an eye. But it's so wonderful...feeling the breeze that blows through the leaves on the trees…feeling the cool, crisp water flow over and hug your hands as you wash them…looking up at the sky and watching the clouds race each other to cross the sun. Watching people walk by you, all of them laughing and smiling, and you think to yourself? So THIS is what it's like…THIS is what it feels like to be happy. You smile the whole day and can't stop…But most importantly? You embrace the fact that you just CAN'T REMEMBER all of the bad things that happened to you…you can't recall any of the memories that always stain your thoughts….for once?  You woke up not wanting to die.

The smell of Gasoline gets stronger the happier you become.  For every smile, every laugh that your body produces…your brain fills up with another gallon of Gasoline. Soon? All you can concentrate on is the nauseating smell…you start to wonder if the people around you can smell it to. Suddenly? It HITS you…like a ton of bricks falling of a skyscraper. The people that you came across who were filled with laughter are all carrying a box of matches. The weather shifts, and the lightening threatens to strike you and spark a flame…
You no longer take comfort in the feeling of rushing water…it's too cold. You stop watching the clouds, because the sun is far too bright…and the people? They no longer have matches…they've upgraded to lighters and blow-torches. You can no longer be around them. You seek solitude, but CRAVE affection. You just want to know that you aren't alone…

Soon? You stop smiling, and the laughter ceases…and then? You forget that you ever knew how to smile. You forget that there was a time when you were able to laugh. Laughter is a star shooting across the black, blanketed sky…and you missed it. All you can concentrate on now is the fact that your mind is at the gas pump and it's fast approaching a full tank. What is happiness? Did it ever even exist?....

You only have one thing on your mind now, one thing that DRIVES you to continue. You don't want anything to set your beautiful tree on fire…the one with the blood red leaves…the one that had FINALLY grown back…the one that is calling to you now. It's the thing that represents the last of what you thought it was like to be happy. You watched it grow from the ashes. The more you smiled? The taller and stronger it grew. The more you laughed? The brighter and more grandiose it became.  And when you sat there, smiling to yourself, thinking that you had finally gotten to a point in your life when you understood what happiness felt like? The tree let the sun sink into its leaves and illuminate them, beckoning you to come to it…to climb up into its safety. And so you do…
But with you comes that smell…GASOLINE. You try to cover it up by rubbing one of the leaves from your tree onto your skin. The leaves smell so wonderful, that you close your eyes as you hold them up to your face, the velvety soft skin of each leaf brushing across your cheek, leaving a faint red brush stroke from contact. The trees branches start to close in around you, hugging you tightly. Intertwining around your body and creating a shield from the outside world…from all of those things that could spark a fire and burn down your beautiful tree. For a little while, you don't mind the fact that you haven't smiled in days…haven't laughed in weeks, because you still have your tree. Your tree is still holding you, it's presence makes you feel worth something…keeps you from feeling alone.

The smell of Gasoline starts to become too strong to ignore…too strong to push away. The leaves that were once a brilliant blood red start to fade to a brownish, rust color. The air is stagnate and the sun has stopped rising…and without the sunlight to flow through the trees leaves? They start to fall off…and now cover most of the circumference around the trees base. Memories start to creep back inside your mind…ones that cause your mind to falter, and your senses to go into overdrive. The sickening feeling of sadness starts to permeate and grow on your skin, sinking straight into your blood stream…but you stay in your tree. Because your tree means safety…even though it no longer has leaves…even though it's branches are loosening their grip around you, exposing you to the world…
And that's when you hear it…the laughter. Not of your own…it's like nothing you have never heard. It's twisted and heartless, broken and covered with rusty nails…it's the Darkness. And this is the part you never understand…you did EVERYTHING right. You took your pills, the ones that were supposed to help make your tree grow and THRIVE…you ran across landscapes daily, trying to escape IT…IT being the Darkness. You ate the right foods…isolated yourself from the people who carried the matches. From the people that could TRIGGER a fire that would destroy your tree….but it doesn't matter. Nothing matters.
The base of your tree is crumbling and you can feel your body slowly shifting downward, closer to the ground. You break off one of the branches from your tree…you smell it. GASOLINE. And you can hear the laughter…the wind mocking you and penetrating your safe haven…

You still hear the horrid laughter all around you. The Darkness is unforgiving, unmerciful…the Darkness lives inside your mind. Then you notice it…your hair is wet now, your clothes are drenched, but there has been no rain. The moisture is HEAVY.  The smell of Gasoline is so strong, it makes you vomit. You see your insides splash upon the ground…and the second it makes contact with the decaying leaves of your beautiful tree? FLAMES. The entirety of the ground surrounding your tree is now in flames. And the fire flips and dances, licking the bark and turning the branches into ash…then the flames come for you. You are stuck at the very top of this once magnificent tree, and you now have nowhere to go. You don't want to go through this again. You don't want to have to live amongst the ashes…you never know how long it will take each time for the seed in your mind to germinate and start growing into your tree again. You don't want to wait in the ashes…the ashes are a horrid place…nothingness. It's a VOID. A Black Hole that sucks up everything good…and makes it toxic to taste. You don't want to keep burning in the flames that never seem to extinguish themselves…it's all too painful to bear. You've been down this road before…hundreds of times before…and it's always the same. ALWAYS. You've watched as your tree died, and as it came back…giving you false hope with its blood red leaves that seem to have their own souls…

((((You now have two choices: One, stay in the tree and wait for the flames to burn you alive…turn you into ash, along with your once glorious tree.  Or? Two, jump.
It's those two choices that dictate the rest of your existence. Keep burning alive…again, and again, and AGAIN. Or? Make it all stop. Make it all go away…and go to a place where your tree is always full of life, always in bloom with its blood red leaves…sunshine slicing through the holes as the wind rustles the leaves. The leaves that smell like Heaven…the leaves that wrap around you like cotton towels straight out of the dryer…
But jumping is the easy part…you've done it before...waking up in a pile of ashes, covered in greasy oil that had made the fire spread more rapidly, more deadly…just like you had wanted. But there, right beside your face, was a tiny green tree sprout. You find this very intriguing…almost humorous…because this time? You hadn't planted a seed…and yet? Your tree still tries to grow.))))

The smoke is starting to choke you and burn your eyes…you start to remember it all now…remember EVERYTHING. Dissociation is like that…you can only block things out and forget them for so long…then they HIT you full-force when you least expect them to. Each memory, each negative thought…each smile that never happened…it all FEEDS the flames. You can feel the heat now…the flames licking your naked skin. You scream and scream, but no one ever hears you…the smoke flows in through your open mouth and strangles your heart….but? You choose to stay in the tree…this time, at least. The pain is excruciating…but you deal with it…you HAVE to deal with it.

You stay in the tree, because you want to see it grow again…you want to feel it's warmth when it grows up from the ashes, yet again. You want to see how beautiful it's blood red leaves are this time…because each time the tree grows up from the ashes? It's even more beautiful that before. You stay in the tree…and you hit rock bottom.

Rock bottom is the ashes that you are now a part of. But once you've made it here? Ashes scattered on the ground and floating through the air with the harsh breeze? You can only go up. And up means climbing into your tree….it means learning how to smile again. The blood red leaves the feel like velvet as they brush your cheek is laughter…
You may not smile for months…may not laugh for a year…may not be happy for over three years…but you still sit patiently and watch your tree grow…hoping each time that you won't smell the Gasoline when you start to climb it's branches to the top.