Addiction

Recycle

trash” © Quika Brockovich, 2013. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Stop.

We lean on things because we are clinging to the idea they can make our feelings stop. Not help cope with anything. Not deal with our anxiety, our depression, our loss. That isn’t our intention. We just want the emotions to stop. The anger, the frustration, the hurt, the fear. Cast it out. Cover it up. Make to stop.

Even when we stopped drinking, stopped using, stopped whatever addictive behavior we’d deemed useful. Even when we started looking at our damaging behaviors. Everything we did was still under the guise that this too would somehow allow us to make the feeling stop. We became bound by the idea that if we can understand where the hurt comes from we can fix it. Make it go away. The goal was never to embrace it. To face it. We want to trace everything back to its origin so we can destroy it. Time-traveling to kill the would-be mothers of our greatest influencers before they conceive. Continue reading →

Addiction

Emerge

"City behind a barbed wire" © Michal Macura, 2012. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
City behind a barbed wire” © Michal Macura, 2012. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
“I don’t understand where this came from and I just…I just hate it. I never used to be like this.”

“Yes you did. You just masked it.”

I constructed an idea of who I am out of hundreds of nights spent smoking cigarettes and drinking bourbon. Trimmed it with drug abuse. Dusted it with a series of destructive relationships. The things I did defined me. They let me ignore the person underneath. I was a series of actions. Choices without a skeleton to hold them. Fragility. Vulnerability. Insecurity, frustration, and anger. There was no place for them between empty bottles and bloody noses. I could pretend I was the person the substances made me. In that there was safety. Continue reading →

Addiction

Glass

"Dark Skies" © Fraser Mummery, 2011. CC BY 2.0.
Dark Skies” © Fraser Mummery, 2011. CC BY 2.0.
It used to be leaping from my chair and, in one grand swoop, clearing my desk of everything. A smashed computer screen, pens, paper, and a couple half-full glasses of water littering the floor. “Look at me!” I wondered how you didn’t notice. “Please, just look at me.”

Now my posture tightens. Teeth clench. I don’t break eye contact and I steady my breath. In a moment indiscernible from the next the glass I’m holding is crushed in my hand. Fragments embed in the folds of my skin, sparkling water and a lime wedge. I don’t flinch, just cock my head. “You were saying…” Continue reading →