The Search for Answers from Within: A Compilation of Emotional Experiences Expressed Through Poem and Prose

By Joshua Elkins

This is a collection of poetry, prose, and overlaid commentary that follows my personal and emotional experiences spanning across multiple transitionary periods throughout high school. Written to cope with the emotional and spiritual turmoil imbued within that particular time frame, I had distinct hopes to not only overcome the trials and tribulations but also provide something tangible to share with those around me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984539168

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Copyright © 2018 by Joshua Elkins.

ISBN:                  Softcover                        978-1-9845-3917-5

                            eBook                              978-1-9845-3916-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/11/2018

Xlibris

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Acknowledgments

Dedicated to anyone who struggles

Regardless of their problem

May you find your inner peace

And smile again

Table of Contents

The Beginning (Chapter One)

8/15/14 Within a Room

6/25/15 Dream Account

1/24/16 Desolation

1/24/16 Frozen in Time

1/26/16 I

1/27/16 TRUTH

2/2/16 Distance

2/7/16 Nothing

2/7/16 Thoughts

2/7/16 Untitled Document

2/15/16 Contradict

2/16/16 Lust and Desire

2/16/16 Memories

5/2/16 Untitled Document

5/12/16 Move

5/15/16 Honesty

5/16/16 Left Behind

5/17/16 Friends

5/24/16 Thoughts

5/25/16 Thoughts and Stuff

5/30/16 Confusion

6/1/16 Mess

6/14/16 Dream Account

6/17/16 Thoughts 12:43 am

6/19/16 Thoughts

6/21/16 1:58 am Thoughts

7/15/16 Perfection

7/21/16 Dream Account

7/28/16 Thoughts

8/15/16 Cry

9/25/16 1:13 Tonight I sit

10/24/16 40 Second

11/6/16 Dance

The Way Home (Chapter Two)

11/19/16 My World

11/25/16 Complete

11/26/16 The Way

12/4/16 Alive

12/6/16 Fly

12/13/16 Fear

12/15/16 You Are

1/14/17 The Cycle

1/23/17 Eternity

1/30/17 Home

2/7/17 The Day

2/20/17 Ancient Soul

2/21/17 Beauty

2/27/17 Futures of the Past

3/9/17 Eternal Paradise

3/16/17 Fade

3/19/17 Truth (Sleep again…)

3/26/17 Old Feeling

4/2/17 My Dreams

4/2/17 My Offer

To Discover Reality (Chapter Three)

4/10/17 My Dream.

4/27/17 Sunlight

5/15/17 Earth

6/5/17 Call

6/23/17 Hostile

6/29/17 History

7/20/17 Beyond

8/4/17 …

8/4/17 … .. .-.. . -. -.-. .

8/6/17 Have You Forgotten?

8/7/17 Silence

8/8/17 Strange

8/9/17 Above

8/21/17 Jive

8/30/17 Loathe

9/7/17 Sleepy Thoughts

9/20/17 Ramblings

9/21/17 Supernova

10/16/17 Hero

11/10/17 Untitled Document

The Edge (Chapter Four)

11/17/17 Dream Account

12/4/17 Rejection

12/4/17 Wandering

12/11/17 Falling

12/16/17 Dream Account

1/8/18 Traversing the Void

1/9/18 A Fine Line

The End (Chapter Five)

1/15/18 A New World

1/15/18 A Smile

Introduction

Allow me a moment to be honest and elaborate on what exactly is happening in this compilation. The following poems and accounts are nothing more than a representation and expression of myself over the course of five or so years. They are not tampered with minus the exception of editing for spelling. They are presented in a chronological order from the first poem I wrote to the last one before I entered a new chapter in life.

I compiled my work with the goal of creating a memento of sorts, but I was never one to keep things to myself. I feel that hoarding everything would do my work and myself a dishonor, and that would defeat the point of ever writing in the first place. I strongly feel that even the most mediocre product should be shared if the creator feels it suitable to display. My pride, joy, and sense of emotional expression written into each piece is justification enough to compile them in a format more easily shared.

It occurred to me in a recent epiphany that life’s ups and downs were more beneficial than I originally speculated, and once I found the time, I reflected on my previous work. Each experience written down felt original, but some ideas are often repeated. The struggle and the daily grind that is presented in every effort is a pure reflection of the mental state I found myself at each time. Equipped with this knowledge, I think it would only be polite to provide some context for each piece before I share given that I find the capacity to remember where I was when I wrote them.

I do not intend to waste much more time, but before I proceed, it feels only right to elaborate on the time frame. The poems date all the way back to 2014 up until January 2018. This time frame sets me from about 8th grade until I graduated high school. My work follows a rather simple line of logic as the events in my life inspired me to write.

My life is much like any other. I face hardships and sadness, so I write poetry and prose in order to cope successfully, and I find myself glad to have discovered writing as a viable source of comfort. It eases my pain, and I hope that maybe I can inspire others to seek out a healthy way to cope with the stresses of life. Whatever the escape is, constructive work on oneself has always been a way I’ve sought to carry myself through.

These poems are simply the words that felt closest to my actual emotional status. If it adequately described what I was experiencing, then I used it. These pieces are not designed to evoke any specific emotion. I would rather you, the reader, to derive your own meaning and emotional experience from them. Poetry is subjective, and what I experienced while I wrote them, and what I experience now when I reread them, may not be what you discover in it. I encourage you to search for your own meaning within the words I use, and I hope you can maybe find yourself in what I experience.

Thank you for taking the time to relive part of my adventure through life!

Cheers,

Joshua K Elkins

The Beginning

I intend to be brief, but this is segmented up into five parts. This first collection spans from 8/15/14 until 11/6/16. This period is characterized by the defining event of my high school life and the struggles in self-discovery and realization that followed.

It was a dark time in my life, and I think that if I would have perished at any time due to myself, that would have been the prime time. My concerns for my own health slowly diminished after this time, but the fact remains that I was a danger to myself.

Though I am fine now, I cannot say that I have always been that way, and looking back at the poetry and prose written during this time frame really helps me appreciate my current status.

It would appear that life has gotten better, and I thoroughly enjoyed looking back at how I have progressed as an individual. Watching myself grow brings me great amounts of satisfaction, and I hope I can inspire someone else to take the extra steps to improve their own lives as time goes on. It is possible to recover. I hope I have proved that.

Take the time to work hard and find positive outlets to release stress, and I promise that life will eventually take a positive turn for everyone. I truly believe that, and if all it takes to inspire that hope is showing it can be done, then I am more than happy to try.

8/15/14 Within a Room

This was written during the end of my 8th-grade year transitioning into high school. Times were incredibly dark then, and I recall being on suicide watch for most of my time. I was not watched, but I watched, as many of my friends were incredibly unstable. I often reminisce about the few moments of happiness I experienced that year, but with the love often came a stark reminder of the pain and guilt that permeated much of that year. At the time I wrote this, I want to say I was in the midst of a decline myself, and all I wanted to see was who I really was. Unfortunately, I do not recall much else of those times, as I have tried to erase them within my memory.

I sat in a room.

The room was wide.

The room was quiet.

The room was black

white, and bland.

The room lacked taste.

The room lacked Interest.

This room was… different.

In this room was a bed.

Was a desk.

Was a book.

In this book was a word

In that word was a picture

In that picture was a mirror.

In that mirror was myself.

In myself, I saw the room.

In myself, I saw the word.

The room was black

white, and bland.

I was black

White, and bland.

In that word was a picture.

In that picture was a tree.

In that tree was myself.

In myself, I saw age.

I sat in the room.

I sat in the mirror.

I sat in the word

In the picture

in the tree.

I sat deep in thought.

And smirked a little within.

6/25/15 Dream Account

Please excuse my reluctance to explain this one. This was the event that transformed everything. I had a dream at the end of my summer vacation freshman year. Tensions were building in my life, and the fear that it instilled in me was absolute. This dream focused on the loss of a friend who I held closer than anyone else, and after I looked back on the breaking tension and shattering realities, I knew their absence would absolutely devastate me. This dream was like prophecy to me, and as I watched the events unfold in some sick way, I knew the anguish that awaited me would be unlike anything else I had experienced up until that point.

And she left.

And that was the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

This chapter would be one ruled by insecurity, melancholy, self-loathing, introspection, and change.

The truth is. This loss would rule my life for most of the coming years, and I tried my hardest to move beyond it. The world felt like it was chaining down my soul, and finding peace with it was the greatest challenge ever posed to me.

I had the weirdest anomaly show up in my dreams last night. I am a little unsure of how to express my feelings for it, and even now it is mildly fading from my head, so I will just write it down and see how I feel later. I know there will be some holes, so I will try to fill them with something that I would expect would have happened. I will try to keep it at face value though, which may or may not stunt the length. Without further distractions, this is my dream account from 6/25/15.

I remember waking up and feeling weird. While I still had control over my own body, I was very confused as to what I was… seeing. Something was completely new and off, and it took me a moment to figure it out. It was indeed the fact that I was viewing everything from an over the shoulder perspective. The day was apparently something exciting, but I forgot just what was going to be going on that day. It would soon become quite apparent what would be happening. I walked through a strange new dwelling that I had assumed later was just a figment of my imagination. It held no significance whatsoever. I ate… some sort of breakfast though I am unsure as to what.

It was at this point that I noticed that everything around me was a little… different. I was fully aware that what was happening was, in fact, a dream. I had a sort of mild control over what was happening, but most of it was subconscious. I mostly just knew it was a dream and that I was apart of it. This excited me because I knew I would almost certainly remember it, which was factual and is proven by my writing here.

I showered like any other normal day. The water felt oddly cold now that I think about it, and I felt very uneasy. Something about it just sent chills down my spine, both literally and figuratively. It felt like an instance of foreshadowing to me, but, nevertheless, I got out and threw some clothes on, and I brushed my teeth and combed my hair. It was around this time that I actually woke up. I had stared at my grandpa’s home for some time, and it was only 1 AM. I waited for a little and eventually fell back asleep, and, to my surprise, I was standing at the door of the same odd house I had dreamed up earlier. The grass seemed to be all gray as if my brain decided it was not important enough to color, and a car rolls up to my house. It was at this point that I had already figured out what was going to happen, and I got excited. While I knew that it was mildly pathetic that it was happening, I relaxed and just let it happen.

The car window was rolled down and inside the car was 52806.png 52807.png . While my dreams usually include my best friends some way or another, should I remember, this one felt different in the sense that it wasn’t just one or two people that I knew. I ran down the… oddly gray landscape to hop inside the car. The car, which I have never seen before, seemed to be a Ford, and that’s about all I picked up rushing to get inside. I felt a strong sense of excitement as she turned back and said, Hey Josh. I did not respond, however, because I seemed to have no control over anything vocal. It was at this point that my dream skipped ahead, so I had just assumed that it was driving and talking the entire way here with mild shifts in the scenery.

Once we had arrived, it was at that point that everything started to turn very very… weird. There was a large swimming pool, which I immediately linked to 52810.png ’s love for swimming, and it was in a very large circular shape. It seemed to be without any predetermined depth, but it instead shifted in depth with one’s ability to swim. While this was certainly a neat feature, it seemed to be oddly connected to each person. Too connected I might even claim. The water seemed to be of a super warm and maybe even hot nature, which was pleasant at the time. Inside the pool, there were only a couple of people that I had actually taken the time to register in my brain. I remember seeing 52812.png , and 52815.png . I also distinctly