Addiction

I never know when it’s going to hit me, there’s never any warning.  It creeps up on me and then…, there it is, crippling me, tying me up in knots.  I should be used to it by now, after all, it’s been nineteen years, but still it manages to catch me unawares.

It manifests itself in different ways.  Tears, an aching that no painkiller can touch, the feeling of a void inside that only one thing can fill but never will.

Sometimes I wish I could rend my flesh open, plunge my fist deep into my chest and drag the pain from me.  But that would be the easy option, something the Powers That Be have decided I am not allowed to take.

I manage to keep it hidden from those around me, simply because I don’t want to explain.  Then there would be the kind words; the barely veiled looks of pity, I couldn’t handle those.

I shut myself away, a notebook and pen my only companions, and it is to them that I bare my soul.  Every rip, every tear.  I know they won’t betray me.

My skin is too tight and it itches, I feel stupid and frustrated and I hate myself for putting myself through this torture.  But am I?  Can I control this any more than I can control the weather or the turning of the tide?  And if I could make it stop, would I?  Would without be harder than with?  I’m too scared to find out.  I am an addict and this is my addiction, however painful.

Nineteen years.  So long and yet just a blink of an eye.