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Balance.

Been wracking my brain over the last few days for what I was going to write about. Needed to write about something but couldn’t get right back into some of the things I have written previously. Not feeling drained, more like released from so much that I have consciously or subconsciously been holding on to for years.

Decided that writing about balance, and my struggle with it throughout my life would be a good place to start. I am still trying to find a sense of balance within this website, even. I have begun typing this out on May Twenty-Sixth, Twenty-Seventeen. My last post was May Seventeenth, Twenty-Seventeen. Just one day short of one month — from the day this website was started.

In that time, one month; fifty-one pieces were published.

Balanced out to just about half old, half new. I cranked away night by night. So much that I caused a little bit of a rift in my marriage for a few days. I lost a sense of balance in myself and my life. Focused solely on this website and writing — I saturated myself in them. Like the true addict I am. Found something new and interesting, took my fancy, and I dived headlong in. Had it not been for Megan I may have run myself into the ground affecting me and us in all sorts of negative ways.

Balance is something I have always struggled with. Plenty sure there is an earlier memory about it that my parents could recall, but one that sticks out to me most is when Pokémon first came out for the Game Boy. I was in the second grade. Had a friend at that time, Michael. We would hang out after school every Monday before his parents got home from work — so he would have company and could skip day-care.

After booting up Pokémon for the first time, though. Hanging out with Michael didn’t matter to me so much.

Enthralled by this new world that took the gameplay style I had learned from playing Final Fantasy titles, added cute creatures to collect and level, and was portable. I could play anywhere in the house and get away from everyone to play alone if I wanted to. It was the perfect escape. Which video games have proven time and time again — are. For me, and many others I can only assume.

The first Monday after getting Pokémon Blue (Alan got Red) as a gift I didn’t take the bus to Michael’s. He didn’t take the bus either — Michael went to day-care that day. I had told Michael some nonsense about why I couldn’t be at his place. Couldn’t tell you what. When I got home I don’t remember anyone else being present, though the tiles in the kitchen or walkway had recently been re-done. Was in possession of a key to the house but don’t think anyone was expecting me home — so they weren’t.

Awesome. One of my favorite things in the world is a silent, empty house.

There’s something about it. I feel in complete control of my surroundings and in my element. In those times really nothing should happen that I don’t want to. You know, in the realm of a normal calm sunny day, in the privacy of my home.

So I did what my eight year old self wanted to do, and had been thinking about all day. I ran upstairs, grabbed my Game Boy, and plopped down on the stairs to play. Couldn’t have been very far in at this point, but it had its hooks in me deeply. Doesn’t take much for a video game, movie, or any creative media — honestly. A half an hour or more must have gone by before my mom walked through the front door and asked me what the heck I was doing on the stairs with my Game Boy.

Knowing me, some good ol’ baloney came out. My mom had already gotten a phone call from Michael’s about the bullspit excuse I spewed. So she was legitimately just checking to see if I would tell the truth or not. Mom is good at that.

We had a good long talk after that. About balance, and what is important.

What friendships can provide that video games can’t, and how doing what I did would make Michael feel. I abandoned something that meant a lot to a person because I wanted to play in an imaginary world.

Still have a lot of difficulty with balance, and priorities, and how to get them right. Not professionally — there’s an iron fist in life about that able to keep me in tow. Free time though, how I manage it, what I do with it. Still a daily struggle for me.

I am an addict. I have written about that a few times now. I like to get addicted to things. Now, I am not a twelve-stepper, nor do I adhere to the normal living style of recovering addicts. I still drink alcohol and smoke marijuana. Those are two substances I believe I can control myself with and be a functioning adult perfectly well. I have seen alcohol kill plenty of people I am close to or affect them severely negatively. I really just like a glass of scotch or a beer after a long day to take off the edge. I enjoy the taste, and I don’t often get a buzz, but I do feel better about life.

Regardless of how this living style is perceived by other recovering addicts or people who are not addicts at all, I don’t care.

My current personal and professional life give evidence to my ability to be a responsible adult with these decisions, so that’s all I need to provide if you want to question me. Barring a little coke after the death of my cousin, Paul (which is the only drug I have said I would not say no to if it was in front of me, though would not seek out), I have not touched anything aside from pot and alcohol in nearly ten years.

Well, there was that time where I did some molly, also not long after Paul’s death. My [redacted] [redacted] put it best when he refused, though. “There’s nothing else I can learn from it any more”. Lo and behold, I didn’t. Spent more time trying to figure out what the hell it was cut with that I could see in it and feel in my system than actually enjoying it. Done with that one for a lifetime now.

With that said, the things that I was truly addicted to: cigarettes, personal relationships with people brought closer due to hallucinogenic & drug induced experiences, the rush of trying a new substance, and opiates. Those I really do my damnedest to stay away from.

Opiates are a tough one, because our society medically just doesn’t think about it all that much. How it is literally lab manufactured legal heroin. How addictive it is, and how many lives it destroys without proper monitoring, after care, or an alternative. I have had pain killers within these years, struggled with them as well. I am glad to have family support around me when prescribed painkillers. Things would get terribly ugly otherwise.

Feel like I have lost my way on a few paths here in this piece, but both have to do with balance, and my struggle with it.

I was imbalanced even in the beginning of this website. Thinking I could legitimately handle forcing myself to put out two things per day after I ran out of old things.

This piece was a long way of me talking about my issues with balance, and how I am doing this website almost entirely for me. I really, truly appreciate any and all audience, but also need to recognize balance and to keep myself grounded. I do not need to set precedent about how often posts will go live. I also do not need to feel guilty about when there is nothing new up some days. Nobody is paying me to do this, I do this because I desire it.

So, in the future, still expect my posts to come out at eight o’ clock in the morning. Just don’t expect them every day. Sometimes they will be, sometimes they won’t be. I am going to try and have a little bit more balance in my life, and keep things a little bit more realistic for my health.

As always, thank you for reading. The fact that I have an audience means the world to me and does push me to keep writing.

I was afraid that I would find it difficult to write again after over a week off — but as usual, the fear makes it a lot more difficult than it really is. Especially after getting started.

Thank you for reading and following. If you have any interest in looking for things I have written that you have not read yet. Please check the table of contents, here.

©2017 Trevor Elms
A name and relation has been removed from this piece for anonymity. It will not be added in the future.
Featured photo by Trevor Elms ©2006

 

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Gun.

Recently I wrote in my story Grocery about my fears of losing my mind and potentially going to jail for it. This is going to be the story of how I kept my cool as best I have since my legal troubles — and how I nearly went to prison for it anyways.

I was on probation for felonies, aware that this meant I was unable to own a gun. My awareness however seemed to skip over the fact that I could not even handle a gun. For months I’d been going up to the mountains shooting with a friend.

I am comfortable with and know how to properly handle a firearm.

At this time I was working for Hustle Paintball — and if I wasn’t the Operations Manager yet, was very close to it. Small place, I got in at the basement. I was “important”. Because of this I knew the combination to the gun safe as well as the fact that it already had a handgun with a round in the chamber — and a full magazine to go in case of emergency. I want to say it was a glock.

I look forward to when I do, because I can — I have not held a gun since last holding that one.

I was working late in our first retail location. We had extended some hours of the week to around eight at night and took shifts taking care of it. This was paintball, and I love the sport — but we had plenty of bad customers like any industry.

The particular type of customer I am talking about is the kind that likes to talk really big, buy really small, and then return something after it has been used for a full day. That type of customer.

We as a respectable establishment had allowed it to go on long enough, and stopped allowing it. Then the customer stooped to sending his kid in alone, trying to guilt us into giving the refund.

I had finally had it that day. I wasn’t going to give him the refund no matter what. I explained to the kid exactly what his dad was doing and how it wasn’t cool. That no person with respect would be doing that.

I don’t think dad liked that very much. After the kid left the store, most likely to relay everything just said — he came in with a very large huff.

Now I am not a large man, but I am not small either. I’m more of an actual man now, physically than I was then — and it seems I have gotten slightly taller as well. I was at this time a good 5′ 11″ (and some change), 195 lbs., though.

This chucklehead about my height, maybe a little shorter — looked like his upper half was just sweating with the steroids in his blood stream. Certainly seemed to enjoy his tanning beds, too.

Hey, you do you, I got no problems with it — just don’t be this guy aside from that. I’m only describing him.

With this wild character established, I can continue about how he charged in across an overly large, open, and empty retail area. He had such purpose and anger in his strides. It was really a sight to behold — how confident he was that his money was going to be returned to him and that he would be allowed to continue shopping at the establishment. Like a retail location can’t handle losing a single unreasonable customer.

The veins in his neck were already popping when he addressed me as “kid” — I believe I was twenty-one at this time. Definitely a kid in many ways, definitely didn’t like being called that. It’s been long now and I tuned him out enough during — so I can’t remember minute details of the dialogue.

I just remember a lot of flapping arms and pointing, with threats of friends and loss of money.

I remember telling him politely over and over that his business was no longer allowed at the establishment. That we would not be accepting his return or his refund, as our legal return policy stated we did not have to — and that I would like him to leave the premises as soon as possible. That he was now trespassing.

I knew there were cameras watching, which was a good thing. I however did not think about the fact that they did not record audio. A big mistake I made in being able to press charges or not at the end of this whole ordeal was the fact that I did not point to the exit. I don’t think this is an experience I will go through again as I do not ever intend to work in retail again, but I will never forget that mistake — nor will I repeat it.

Angry-Chicken-Leg-Muscle-Man, didn’t want to hear any of it and refused to go anywhere.

So I did the next best thing, I pretended to give him what he wanted. I told him that if he walked calmly to the superfluous foyer we had, that I would go into the office and process his refund (as I needed to use “managerial computer powers” to do so). I would then walk out of the office, cash in hand and give it to him. The caveat being he had to wait patiently and quietly.

This is when I made a decision for my and others’ safety that could have changed my life forever.

I was not at the store by myself, though I was the only one at the store running it. A couple of friends and one of their girlfriends were there. One of them was at the time the resident part-time paintball marker tech and he was doing maintenance on a bunch of them.

When I walked into the office, which Mr. Aggressive could see through a window from the foyer; I went directly to the gun safe. Made another mistake here — know the gun was a glock now. Did just about everything correctly, I pulled it out of the safe, barrel down towards the ground. Proper finger discipline straight out along grip, above the trigger, not touching it. Then I slipped this loaded and ready firearm with no standard safety — into my waistband.

Mr. Aggressive did not take kindly to this action and left the premises immediately. He then called the cops from his truck. I’m very happy he called the police officers, I just wish they could have arrested him for falsifying a report. This man had already showed his true colors earlier trying to use his kid as a guilt chip on adults for a whack refund request. He took it a step further though when he told the police that I pointed the gun at him, cocked to the side like some wannabe gangster and said:

“You scared, bitch? You want some?”

I get if you’re going to try and embellish to make a point, but at least make it somewhat believable. Thank goodness for those cameras. The police officers honestly seemed inclined to believe him until I showed them the footage. That was only the beginning of my concern, though.

I remember them asking me if there was anything I needed to tell them for the report. Couldn’t tell at that time if they had already run my details and were probing — or if they actually didn’t know. So I told them all about my probation and what I was going through. I told them my concern and that I really didn’t want this to negatively affect my recovery and rehabilitation as a citizen.

I was honest.

If they hadn’t before, I know they did after this because things took an even more serious turn. It went from them asking me questions like I was a victim — to treating me like a criminal. They told me to sit tight and that they needed to get in touch with their superior. I got to sit for a good long while.

If I remember correctly it was about forty five minutes later one of the officers came back with more warmth again. He reminded me that I am on probation for some serious felonies and that I cannot handle a gun. He asked me if I understood that. I told him I understood that I could not be in possession of one by law, but I took that to mean I could not own one. Not that I could not touch one. I was educated this is not the case.

Some may call it luck, I call it being a responsible adult. I was let off with a warning.

I know they talked to my P.O. for a time, I think a lot of me getting let off and not being charged with breaking my probation — is how responsible I was about it.

I did not miss an appointment. I was not ever late. I was always in touch and kept them up to date. I took my probation extremely seriously from day one because I had friends growing up that got on probation for the smallest thing and were still on it ten years later because they couldn’t make smart decisions. Probation gave me the discipline I didn’t manage to learn growing up.

To this day, though. As a normal functioning citizen that is not seeking trouble, this is the most I had feared for my safety and others — from another human being. I feel pretty proud of myself for keeping my calm and for taking care of the situation in a really logical fashion. Especially because at this time I was not taking medication or admitting to my mental illness.

I’m not exactly sure what the deeper meaning is in this one other than keep your cool, be smart, and learn from your mistakes.

It’s not the easiest thing to do all these things, all the time. Though I do think striving to can help us through a lot.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms.
Featured photo by Douglas Montgomery ©2011, Trevor Elms pictured.

 

 

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Last Time.

Normally I will start with a little explanation about my poems. This is a new one that I recently wrote while thinking about past choices. I will be going into more detail at the bottom, because I think explaining the poem at the start could potentially hurt my desired readings of it.

Last Time.

It’s funny,

for the longest time I wanted to remember you.

Give you a ritual,
a grand finale,
one for the ages!

A beautiful view,
alone and introspective,
with the wind blowing across my face…

us two.

But it never was you, was it?

A facade,
fake,
false.

No, no, the forgotten one.
You’re it.
Not a memory to go with you.

Never will I ever remember you.

I think I should thank you for that,

my lack of ‘membrance.

There’s nothing now to tie me to you,
make me think about you.

Nothing about me misses you,

my last cigarette.

 

I’d noticed that I have written about cigarettes multiple times in my work now. It made me want to write about the fact that I have quit them. I am not yet ready to write the story about that journey, but this poem will suffice for now.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms.
Featured photo by Trevor Elms ©2016

 

 

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Belt.

Belts are great. They hold up your pants. Especially for men like me who have nothing to hold up their pants without one. There is a particular belt I own that means the world to me, twice over. It’s the twice over part that gets me.

You see, when I took this belt that I am talking about; from my grandfather’s corpse. I expected to hold on to it for the rest of my life. It’s a symbol to me, at that very moment it became one. The Model-T on that belt buckle is like my “S” insignia, it became hope.

If you have been following my writing for some time I am sure you have read about my cousin, Paul. Paul was the little brother I never had. He looked up to me with these eyes. Eyes I have only been able to enjoy again since my nieces and nephews began to use them. He was also my best friend at the same time — because we were exactly two years apart. So it flipped between the two, but more often than not he would look at me with such admiration. He did it more as I got older, and I still miss it dearly.

It’s this reason why no matter what anyone tells me, I feel a particular guilt about his loss.

I know he had plenty other influences around him, and I saw him but maybe twice a year for most of our lives after our early childhood — but damn do so many of those times define me. I want to think they did him too.

I remember before he was even smoking cigarettes — riding bicycles to town so I could go buy some. He would ask to have one and I would oblige, knowing full well if he wanted to no one was going to stop him anyways. It’s not the sharing that sticks out to me, it’s the bicycle ride.

Just like my friend Alex, so much of the time I spent with Paul was purely with him. Just him. We didn’t need or want anything else, and so many memories I have of him are like titanium encrusted across my brain. So a lot of the things I said and did, I feel like they stuck with him.

Like I wrote, I know there were a multitude of other influences and I was far from the largest. But I still did then and now feel a modicum guilt for the path he went down and ended at. Paul made his own choices, but I think with any loss we feel like there is more we could have done.

This is going to be about what I did do, though. I gave him the belt.

It’s funny, thinking on it — I didn’t even physically hand it to him. I believe I gave it to my Mom and she gave it to my Aunt Mary to give to him. That titanium memory though is from Megan and I’s wedding. May 4th, 2013. Just over four years ago now.

Belt 2
From left to right: Paul Perkins, Mary Pillivant Perkins, Kevin Perkins at the Elms/Taft wedding. Photo by unknown. ©2013

The wedding was over. The reception was over. It was the after party. I can’t remember which relative’s room we were in, but it was facing on the starboard side of the hotel. There were two beds, most likely queen — it was in the Boulderado in Boulder, CO, which is a historic and old place. You know the deal, shiny whites and golds, filigree, encrusted and rimmed mirrors, don’t forget the pretty chandeliers. This room wasn’t filled with all those things, but there were two windows on the far side facing as you walked in.

Paul and I stood amongst the room that was so loud we got called in on a few times. We were center, in front of the beds. Center again, in the gap between the door and the windows. Center. In a world of our own. We just stood there and talked. It’s one of those conversations I only got to have with him once and I was looking forward to checking in on it a few years later to see how things progressed.

It started with him telling me he did not like my now wife until that very day.

Something he saw in her, in me, in us that day. It made him realize something about growing up. How he didn’t exactly know everything. He apologized for it and we had a great heart to heart about him getting to know Megan better.

There was alcohol involved, but I know we both remembered this whole conversation clear as day. Since he had already broached serious subjects I decided that it was the perfect time for me to have yet another talk about his health, and making the right decisions — not putting his body in danger by making bad ones. I was well within my recovery at this time. I was not off probation, but I was on emails only at that point.

I said to him, after probing questions about what his plans were over the next couple years,

“Paul, I’m going to give you Grandpa’s belt. Understand something. If you fuck up again I am going to take it back. I don’t want it back, you don’t want to give it back. It’s Grandpa’s belt.”

He was over the moon about it. I remember him calling me after he got it and being concerned about needing to put a hole in it.

“Paul, Grandpa had a fatter waist than me, I put a hole in it. No worries, wear the thing.”

I really, truly, never wanted that belt back. I am not going to lie, I missed it sometimes. When I would see him and he wasn’t wearing it, I got bummed out — but I know he wore it. From my own recollection, family’s… and how worn that new hole is.

This is why I say the belt means the world twice over to me. I took it off my Grandfather, I hoped to inspire my cousin, and now I keep them alive inside and on me with that belt. I think about them both every day. I have them with me every day.

What I wouldn’t give, though. To be bummed about him not wearing that belt when he could be.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms.
Featured photo by Trevor Elms ©2017
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Grocery.

Feeling a little drained of my writing juice again. One must push on, though. We don’t get better or accomplish anything by sitting on our laurels. Now I am at the point of writing in multiple drafts before I hit my groove and finish one. Maybe I finish this on this sentence, or maybe I go to another draft and keep writing. One will be finished.

I’ve felt I was beginning to ramble a bit there but I think that is a good thing. Sometimes I still ramble, and sometimes I am still really uncomfortable and just don’t feel mentally healthy. A thing that I no longer feel uncomfortable about is going into grocery stores.

Something happened after I lost my marbles. I was terrified of grocery stores. I think the most interesting thing about it is I have always been able to explain it — I even owned it when it was happening. I would refuse to go to grocery stores alone and be very uncomfortable in them. I’m pretty sure when Alex visited me in Hawai’i we only went to ABCs and the like. Mom did the grocery shopping.

I have not been able to explain completely why, but the repetition of all the items made me feel really uncomfortable.

I’d hazard to say it was almost like a form of claustrophobia? There’s plenty of room in grocery stores so that is the worst way to explain it. I felt like all the products on the shelves and produce in the baskets were aggressive. Like they were an army encroaching with knives lodged in their teeth to pounce on me. That was a terribly oppressive feeling to be getting from Aunt Jemima, Mr. Peanut, & the Green Giant.

I felt like shopping carts were warthogs snorting and charging at me. When a squeaky wheel went by it would summon a twitch.

I would still at times have thoughts that the people handing out food samples might want to poison me.

This was after getting out of Kahi Mohala, this was after starting therapy, this was just an every day thing that I had to deal with and fight against. It lasted up until around five or six years ago as well. I have Megan to thank for helping me through it because those feelings don’t come up any more. I used to have even more that I can’t even remember and am happy to be so far removed from the ordeal now that I don’t.

Megan accomplished this feat in the sweetest of ways, too. She would just softly nudge me to go to the grocery store for one thing. In and out. Just continually dip my feet in. I think there was one day where Megan was out of town and I needed to get more than one thing. If I remember correctly she stayed with me on the phone and walked me through the aisles so that I didn’t lose myself in there.

That’s certainly a laughable matter, a grown man getting lost in a grocery store — but I wasn’t laughing at the time. It was a matter that needed to be taken seriously and I needed to keep myself grounded and focused. Otherwise I very well could have just lost myself in an abyss of madness again. Who knows what I could have done the second time, and I surely would have broken my probation, therefore giving me a cool one-hundred-twenty years.

I can’t remember exactly how the DA came up with that one, but I think I remember it having to do with my plea deal then being broken at that point, so the assault would revert to being on a police officer — and they would have the ability to double the max sentence of all crimes committed. That would be a really hairy situation to put myself in over beef jerky looking at me the wrong way.

It’s my awareness about these feelings and the fact that they were unhealthy that differentiated me from the person who makes an irreversible scene. That’s it.

I think that’s something that some people don’t realize about mental illness. I am much more balanced now that I’m far removed from my substance abuse and mental break with reality. For the longest time, though,  I was just on the verge of cracking again.

This was before I got on medication, I was still refusing my diagnosis of being bi-polar. Let’s be honest here too — these things I  was dealing with go a bit beyond bi-polar anyways.

Megan’s small pushes in the direction of getting myself acclimated with them was perfect, though. She wouldn’t ever belittle me or make fun of me for it, but she would totally call out my nonsense and say that it was something I needed to work on to function. That I would need to go to the grocery store at times because she wouldn’t be able to go for me.

When I write it out like that I feel like it may make her sound a bit motherly. She definitely wasn’t motherly. At that time it was more like an embarrassed girlfriend wondering what cuckoo she had gotten herself stuck with. I needed every bit of that.

Megan would often make me laugh at all the ridiculous stuff that coming out of my insanity would cause me to do. The fear of grocery stores sticks out to me most of all — and the others were so minute that I would have to ask her, I have forgotten.

This is another time where I am not sure what the meaning is, but damnit I am going to try and find one, and it’s going to be about conquering your fears. I picked this draft because I just needed to pick something. I had a fear that I wasn’t going to be able to write a full article because I haven’t in a couple days and lost a bit of my spark for it.

Here I am nine-hundred-ninety-five words in. Just a few more to go and I have a full piece to edit and post in the morning. Just like my fear of grocery stores. Conquering it started small but then it grew into something more and more. Until the journey to the end becomes so overbearing compared to the fear of the beginning that you end up seeing the end much sooner than you may have thought.

It’s really nice to set the mind to conquering a fear, and then doing it.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms.
Featured Photo by Trevor Elms ©2016
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 3 Comments

Lullabies.

January 5th, 2009. I think this may have been the very first thing that I wrote after getting out of Kahi Mohala. There’s a lot in these words I am still trying to make out. Thinking about it I am pretty positive that I was wondering if my substance abuse and halting of dreams at night had anything to do with making me crazy. And my dearest friend would be myself, the former self.

I still don’t dream very much any more, and when I do it is usually a nightmare. I am comfortable with that reality these days. That when I dream it is often pure torture. I think many have this problem.

Lullabies.

Dreams…

Real?
Unreal?
Or Surreal?

Nightmares.

The haunting eclipse that has daunted the narrow path,
since before I can remember.

I used to fall to my death multiple nights of the week,
to wake up right before I hit the ground, on my bedroom floor.

I used to be scared shitless, of the open closet door.

Though supposing the halt of these subconscious realities every night,
made it hard to deal with the problems I never knew existed.

Was it you? One of my dearest friends, that made the reality back home, so much harder to bend?

If it was, just know.

That I will go farther in life, than you could ever go.

One step back I may have taken,
but from this crack, my bones won’t be breakin’.

So from those deaths in my dreams,
I will always be stronger, than when you were scheming.

 

Thank you for reading.

©2009 Trevor Elms
Featured photo by Trevor Elms ©2016.
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 8 Comments

Pops.

This isn’t something I was intending to write yet. I’m going to be honest though, I was drinking and I got to thinking about him so couldn’t help myself. Don’t worry. I don’t write inebriated for the most part — I will start a draft, close it, and finish it another time as I am now.

My Pops, my Dad, my Father, my Hero, my Man, my Idol, my Map; has saved my life.

Probably more than I can recall. I’m sure he knows more than I do. This is about the one time, though. The one time he had a conversation with me that I know he remembers maybe more than any other.

I’ve heard it a lot of times from his perspective, but I’m not sure yet I’ve shared it from mine. This will be the closest in the timeline yet that I have written about — to when I lost my mind.

Kahi Mohala
The courtyard my family and I threw a football together in, at Kahi Mohala. Photographer unknown.

I was still in the mental hospital at this point, Kahi Mohala. It is a facility that I volunteered (was deftly convinced) to put myself in after being bailed out of jail, in tow of my Mother. I remember trying to hide from the “Yakuza” in the car seat — backed all the way down so nobody could see me, on the way there. It wasn’t even just on the way there. We stopped at another facility beforehand that didn’t have the capacity? Or something. Before that we went to the Punchbowl memorial. That is when I remember realizing I was being “followed”, though it wasn’t even the tenth time I’d made that realization in the preceding few days.

If you go to the memorial today, I remember signing the guest book. It was 2008. If the page is still there I may have signed it Trevor, Trayber, Travor, Trebor, or otherwise. It would have been December 24th.

That and my soap totem are a story for another day, though.

I remember my Pops and I sitting in some furniture. It was on the other side of some glass, with an enclosed garden beyond it. There was a, if I remember, budless tree surrounded by rocks within the garden.

I sat in the chair, facing parallel with the glass on its right side. I cannot remember the color — but the pattern was raised, and consistent. It created a sense of comfort.

Pops sat nearest to me in the corner of a sofa. The sofa was placed in a ninety-degree rotation of the chair, facing to view out the glass. It was of the same fabric. I need to place the scene very deliberately because that is the last I can remember of it.

Everything else I can remember is the pure intensity in his eyes.

I wrote earlier that I was deftly convinced to volunteer myself unto this place. It couldn’t have been seventy-two hours after that — I decided I was perfectly sane and should be released. Pops’ entire mission was to convince me not only to stay, but that I wanted to stay, and he succeeded.

He remembers the exact words he used with much more lucidity than I. What is in my memory though is that he made me feel like I needed the people in that place. Not only for my future as a functioning adult in society, but as a person.

Pops remembers convincing me to stay because I needed the doctors to tell the lawyers and the judge that I was just some kid that made a mistake and needed to learn from it. I remember him convincing me that those doctors, and those nurses, actually had my best interests in heart.

That I was safe. That I was where I should be and that I wasn’t okay.

It was like a pinhole camera. My Dad was the light and he found his focus, holding on for dear life — my dear life. I was not at this time capable of looking outside my insanity. I was still bopping to random Beyonce songs on the radio and drawing really uninteresting tribal shapes thinking I was some sort of messiah.

He broke through, though. I can only explain how by the intensity of the love that he had within his eyes when he spoke to me. I’m not sure I have ever seen so much concern and care in a man’s eyes before. It makes me feel like a better person just thinking about it now. The connection he made with me, and with his eyes in that time — legitimately brought me into a moment of true, realistic, clarity.

I don’t remember what it looked like, but I know he does. He’s told me about it. That he could see my body language, facial expression, and own eye contact — return to normal for just the slightest of moments. Enough for it to register.

It wasn’t shortly after I went into an existential conversation about how the Devil & Angels live among us and I am a combination of them both realized — or some such nonsense of the like.

I stayed, though. Without much more complaint or argument.

Details of my time in there are still rather fuzzy for me, but I did stay, and did behave; as well as have a number of the patients enjoy spending time with me. I did the activities and talked about my feelings and must have balanced out a bit — because I was out a week or so later.

Another powerful memory I have about that place was leaving it. I can remember how satisfying it was to finally smoke a cigarette again. To smoke it just outside the premises before getting in the car with my Mom to a hotel room. It gave the experience such finality to me, at least the Kahi Mohala portion of it.

I still wasn’t right for a long time, and I’m not sure if I ever will be. There’s definitely a lot less wrong with me today maybe than ever before in my life. I owe a lot of that to all the support I got from everyone throughout the ordeal.

In this piece though, in this moment in time, I owe it all to Pops.

Thanks for being there for me, Dad. Thank you for finding a way to get through to me that day. I’m not sure anyone else could have.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Featured photograph taken by Derek Lofgreen ©2013
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 2 Comments

Music.

Music is something I have a very personal relationship with. So personal I very rarely share my music interests with others. So personal that I have stopped listening to entire genres of music because I could not control my emotions or desired actions while listening.

Music is so personal to me I literally feel it inside of me. My favorite thing to do during my substance abuse days was to sit by myself in nature, on LSD, and listen to music. To let it absolutely consume me. My every atom. That is, to this day, my favorite experience in life. I don’t know if that will ever change.

I’m starting to finally be able to feel music again. I can listen to Metal again which is fantastic. I’m actually going to a Slayer & Lamb of God concert this summer with my cousin, Ryan. Well, Megan’s cousin, but he’s mine now too. I don’t think of him as anyone but my cousin, and family. That’s why I am comfortable with going to this concert with him. This concert in this genre of music that means so much to me.

After I went crazy music was dead to me.

Completely, utterly, unquestionably, dead. I could not feel it inside of me. It gave me no pleasure. People would try to share their music with me and I would pretend to care. I couldn’t listen to anything. Not the Rolling Stones, Faith No More, Metallica, Tech, Rage, Queen, Tribe, Common, Zep, and on and on and on.

It’s one of the worst experiences I have dealt with — and it lasted years. It really wasn’t until the last few months where music made me really want to move around again. I’ll never be much of a dancer, but I’m saying that I wouldn’t even tap my foot to a beat at this time.

There were spurts, surely. But it wasn’t as deep or as consistent as it is right now. I’m open to and discovering new music. Something I haven’t done again until recently. For the longest time I was either listening to sports radio or film scores — as I never lost my love and emotion for film, so their scores were a form of music I was still capable of connecting with. Kind of a funky roundabout, but it really helped me cope with the issue for a long time.

It’s Metal and my love for Paul Perkins that has brought music back to me.

My cousins Kevin & Paul are the biggest metal heads I know. They were just finally getting myself and my brother into it right before I went insane. Alan went on to become just as big of a metal head as the both of them. I, on the other hand, could not listen to it any longer. I was too angry and it put me in even more of an angry place. Even when the songs weren’t inherently angry! Something like Amon Amarth’s Live Without Regrets is just super optimistic and inspiring.

Unfortunately Paul is no longer with us, but I like to think that part of the reason I am able to really connect with music again is because of that loss.

The journey of me being able to connect with music again can be traced back to a trip myself, Alan, & Kevin took to a record store in San Francisco while visiting Alan together — not very long after Paul’s passing.

This was the first exclusively vinyl store I have ever been into. My brother is hugely into collecting vinyl records like I am with physical movies, so he was super excited to show us his digs. There was a great smell in there. Like the kind you get when opening a brand new paperback book. It just wafts of creativity awaiting consumption.

Rows of boxes with hand-written cardboard signs denoting genres, sales, & price ranges. Records just littered in organized chaos, awaiting fingers to eagerly rifle through them. It’s here that I just went off on my own and started looking around. Alan wanted Kevin and I to each pick out something so we could listen to it together. Alan, Paul, Kevin, & I spent many hours solely listening to music together. Music was our language. I just wasn’t feeling it, though. I didn’t know what I was interested in picking up — because I wasn’t interested at all. I just wanted to get out of there.

Then I watched them look through the Metal section, and walk away from it without anything in hand.

I thought to myself “Well, if there’s nothing interesting for them, maybe I can find something.”

That’s all it took. I walked over to the left most box in the section that was facing the wall and started flipping through each record. I’m the kind of person that loves to judge a piece of artwork by the cover chosen for it. If you don’t put effort into your presentation then don’t expect me to put effort into what is behind it. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” has been far more relevant to me in life when it comes to people than when it comes to actual books.

Tempest
The album artwork for Tempest, by Lycus. ©2011

And then I saw it, Tempest, by Lycus. There was something about the album artwork that just spoke to me. It felt like something that if showed to Paul he would not allow me to put down. He would grab my shoulder vigorously and bring his head close to my ear with a “Duuuuuuude! That’s wicked!” So I called Kevin & my brother over and they did something really similar. It was everything I wanted it to be.

Lycus is a specific kind of Metal, Doom Metal. It’s very melodic, deliberate, and patient. There’s  a lot of chanting, and it just had a way of worming into my bones when we listened to it. It’s a kind of music that really allowed me to embrace my torture and grow with it rather than fight it.

Since the three of us first listened to that album my connection with music has been like a tarp full of water with a small tear in it. It starts as a small drip, but as it continues to rain, and slowly drops — that rip ever grows.

I realized today after having reconnected myself with music like Bullets & Octane, Coheed & Cambria, and even the original World of Warcraft scores — the tarp is almost entirely gone now.

I can bask in the rains of music again.

It’s a really liberating thing to be honest. I missed it quite a bit. I’m pretty sure human beings as a species in general share this same connection with music that I have. So you can understand when I tell you that having music dead to me is maybe the worst thing out of this journey that I have experienced.

This is the thing I am talking about when I say that everything happens for a reason.

The greatest gift I can give Paul in his passing is what I am doing now. I am using his loss, and my heartbreak from it to make me a more complete person again. It’s what he would want. He would be so excited to hear that I am going to the concert this summer. I only wish I didn’t have to carry him with me and that I could actually have him there next to me.

Thank you for inspiring me, Paul. Thank you for bringing music back to me. I miss you.

Music 2
From left to right: Paul Perkins, Trevor Elms, Kevin Perkins. ©2008 – Self Portrait

 

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Featured photo taken by Trevor Elms ©2015, Pictured from left to right: Kevin Perkins, Alan Elms
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 12 Comments

Care.

Something that people who know me closely are aware of — I generally don’t like people, strangers. I’m distrusting and they make me uncomfortable. Something that people who know me very closely are aware of — when I care about people I truly and deeply care about their well being and their life. I would in a split second give my life for them without question.

Today I am going to write about how I spent two weeks living on my friend’s floor to save his life from opiate detox, and how I don’t know if he is alive today.

This is another one where the person will not be named. For one, because if he is alive, I don’t know if he would want this story written about him or not. I would rather err on the side of respect. So this person will henceforth be known as Ben.

Ben is one of my very best friends. You’ll find I have a lot of them. Whether we are in touch or not they will always remain my best friends because I love them for who they were at that time, and whom they have helped me grow to become as a person.

My brother Alan is my other half, just like Megan. Two sides of the same coin. When I went to Hawai’i I had this very large void in my life that needed to be filled. I very much missed my big brother who at that time was more mature than me in a lot of ways. Ben filled that void extremely well. He really took me under his wing as a true drug user and distributor.

That last sentence is a bit sharp, and honest, but it’s also exactly at that time what I was looking for and what I wanted. I’ve already written about how I don’t like school, it was really hard for me to apply myself, how confused I was, and the fact I like to try everything once.

So, I decided the thing I really wanted to learn was how to make a living breaking the law.

Not the things my friends and I in Colorado were messing around with at the time. I’m talking weight, weapons, lack of personal welfare — and a willingness to lose one’s humanity.

That is probably as specific as I will ever write about those times. I honestly can’t even remember too many specifics, one of the worst things about it; or maybe best things. It just goes to show how deep I was into my substance abuse. I also just don’t remember a lot of things about that time because I’m still getting chunks back that were lost within my mental break with reality. Just recently a friend reminded me that the name of the tree we were always sitting under was a banyan tree. I have forgotten simple details like that.

This is about the thing that caused me to hold on to that humanity, and how I was able to see where I was headed if I didn’t correct course.

I still lost my mind after this, but I think the stress of taking care of Ben, and his business; as well as my own consumption of a concoction of substances from Meth to experimental hallucinogens like 2Ci — really compounded into what became my crazy spell. That puts it a bit lightly, but I was. I was absolute batshit crazy. I went to bonkersville.

Spending time with Ben meant I progressively didn’t spend much time with anyone else. I began to spend less time with my friends in our self-described Ohana, and Ben and I even hid from his roommates quite a bit with the door locked. Talking business, bonding over different substances, just in general being best buds. Brothers, so to speak.

Over this time I watched Ben who was never tall, but very stout — go from a very healthy looking individual shooting up a water solution of opiates into his anus, to a very frail — hardly ever lucid sack of skin and bones. A skeleton that wanted to physically assault myself and his roommates for taking and disposing of his terribly hidden stash of black tar heroin.

It was then that I began sleeping on his floor. Getting up any time he needed to release himself in any way, in any fashion, and help him accomplish that.

If I remember correctly his roommates helped him just as much, as I was still running around campus at times during the day and night; trying to close out a lot of Ben’s business. As well as get him out of the nonsense and debt he was putting himself in with the heroin. Classes were so far from a priority at this time that I’m not sure I went to a single one.

Shortly after Ben’s detox I remember one of his roommates getting a hold of family to get him a way out of Hawai’i in hopes to save his life. His room was empty, locked, and closed out but someone still attempted to break in at knife point to get some money from Ben. I’m honestly glad that I was really well known and friendly around campus, but in my dealings with Ben’s business I worked pretty hard to be quiet and not make too much of an impression. I think it may have saved my life.

I skipped ahead there a bit, but it was just to illustrate the kind of people Ben and myself had in common with at that time.

It’s​ this period that caused me to see what things other than alcohol can truly do to a person first hand. Someone who is close to me. Someone who I care about. I’m really glad that Ben had a huge stash of marijuana so that we didn’t need to worry about smoking at all. I’m really not sure he would have survived without it. Pot gave him great relief from the pain, fever, and convulsions that he needed to be helped through.

Nightmares with cold sweats, and absolute full body retching which would not stop no matter how empty his stomach was. It was living death and I never wanted to see anyone ever go through that again.

Not long after Ben left campus my friend Tony passed, and that was the nail in the coffin of opiates for me. I’ve been an advocate for marijuana over the corporate-fueled and socially accepted heroin that are prescription pain meds since. I was very close with people that it has hurt greatly. The two mentioned in this piece both started with 100% legal pain medication which is all too often shoveled into peoples’ hands without any afterthought.

Of course when I broke my shoulder years later I had a great time abusing my prescriptions like the addict I am.

No one in my family even gave it a second thought at that time, including myself. I’m not sure if we all thought I had gotten past it or not, but I very quickly went through two re-fills in a week. By the following week I was popping four pills as I woke just to take two more in an hour to actually feel it.

I think the greater meaning I have been looking for in this piece when thinking about caring for Ben is that:

Opiates are a really dangerous thing. Please be really, really careful with them. They, just like any other addictive drug — can turn an incredibly bright person into something very, very dark.

I really hope I never have to see someone go through that again, and that I never put anyone through something like that myself again. I am an addict, I will always be an addict. It’s something I strive to be better at every day just like my bi-polar. When I say that I am sober I mean from everything but alcohol and marijuana. Those are two things I feel like I have the ability to be a responsible adult with, and I feel like my current life has proven that.

The last time I spoke to Ben was not long after sending him a Facebook message to tell him that I was able to plead guilty on all my charges — and lucky to get five years probation on a deferred sentence.

His way of congratulating me was by calling to ask help him move some weight of Ecstasy through the mail from Hawai’i to California, where he was now residing.

He’s since disappeared from Facebook and I can’t find him anywhere. I do not know if he is alive, and truly wish him the best. However, it was the phone call that proved to me he was lost beyond all doubt.  I did not need to be in contact with him any longer if I wanted to make something of myself.

Thank you for all the support and love that was given to me during my recovery. Ben is the big brother I never want to be.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Photo taken December 13th, 2008 by Mariah C. Pictured w/ Kelli K. just days before mental break with reality.
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Pathways.

November 5th, 2008. One of the more depressing things I have found that I wrote. There’s really no optimism in this whatsoever. At least that I am gleaning from it. I feel like this was when I was really beginning my downward turn. My brother Alan would tell you the same. As later that month when I visited home for Thanksgiving he became very worried about me.

Pathways

Where does this path of mine lead?

It winds,

It twists,

It involves the leaves and the trees.

 

Stumbled have I, at the start.

Too easy is it,

to play when the pathway gets dark.

 

Nightmares of failure and disappointment,

haunt equilibrium and comfort.

 

Hoping the stride here isn’t futile,

Another broken heart.

 

I’m very happy to be taking medication for my bi-polar these days.

Thank you for reading.

©2008 Trevor Elms
Featured photo by Trevor Elms ©2016