Addiction is a chronic (lifelong) condition that involves compulsive seeking and taking of a substance or performing of an activity despite negative or harmful consequences. Addiction can significantly impact your health, relationships and overall quality of life.
In the dim light of early morning, I sit at my kitchen table, the one with the wobbly leg and the coffee stains, and I think of you. You, my inadvertent addiction, my relentless craving. My body aches in your absence, a dull, persistent yearning that no amount of time or tea seems to ease. I'm wrestling with this boulder-sized need for you, a need that refuses to be ignored or pacified.
I tell myself, just one more hit of your presence, just one more moment basking in the echo of your laughter or the warmth of your gaze. "Just one more dose, I can handle it”, I lie to myself, just one more fleeting encounter to tide me over, to help me start the process of forgetting you. But who am I kidding? There is no such thing as a harmless dose of you.
You've become my drug, my own personal brand of narcotic, an endless loop of longing that plays over and over in my mind, a song whose lyrics I wish I could forget but find myself humming under my breath. Missing you is a relentless demon, a burden that stoops my shoulders and a whisper that frays the edges of my sanity.
I'm caged, suffocating in a space filled with the essence of you: a presence that's omnipresent in its absence. I feel trapped in a prison with your scent. In the walls, only pictures of us. Everything is a memory of you and every second a reminder of what I've lost.
Everywhere I turn, I see shadows of you, echoes of laughter, fragments of conversations that we never finished. I chase after your mirage, lunging towards phantoms. I scour my memories, picking at them like old scabs, searching for a scrap of solace, a morsel of misery.
I'm floating in an endless void where your touch still lingers on my skin, and I run, oh how I run, in the labyrinth of my mind, trying to escape the image of you, the idea of you, the insatiable need for you.
It's a strange sort of limbo where I exist, waiting, always waiting for a sign, a word, a miracle. My life has become a waiting game, a countdown to the next time I can trick myself into believing that a shadow in the corner is you.
Your absence is a constant never-ending withdrawal that leaves my hands trembling and my heart aching. Your absence has become my constant companion, a relentless shadow that mirrors my every move, whispering tales of a love that once was.
Without you, the world is eerily silent, a vacuum where the heartbeat of life seems to have stuttered to a stop. The distance between us, whether miles or mere inches, feels like an insurmountable chasm, halting the flow of my very lifeblood.
My vision has narrowed to a tunnel with only you at the end, a blinding beacon in a sea of darkness. Your image is etched into my dreams, a permanent fixture in my night-time wanderings, a constant reminder of what I've lost.
My very biology rebels in your absence; my heart forgets its rhythm, my lungs their breath. My addiction to you courses through my veins, a relentless tide that sweeps away all reason and leaves only you in its wake.
In the universe of my dreams, you were my caretaker, my guardian angel, my dream incarnate. Every slumber brings visions of you, and I wake feeling less like myself and more like a vessel filled with echoes of you.
It's a funny thing, how we lose ourselves in this dance of dependency. I handed you the reins, let you steer my happiness, my sadness, my everything. And here I remain, not quite sure where the “You” ends and the “I” begins. Where are borders of myself? Where have are the clear lines from you?
But there's a peculiar freedom in this surrender, a strange peace in acknowledging that I'm hopelessly, irrevocably addicted to the very notion of you. In the twisted logic of my addiction, your dominance is a comfort, a familiar pain that I've grown to depend on.
I'm adrift, untethered, losing pieces of myself bit by bit as I succumb to the ghost of you, the haunting specter that refuses to leave me in peace. The voices in my head, they're mine, all mine, for you no longer speak to me, no longer reach out across the void. Time, that fickle friend, has lost its meaning, bending and twisting around the memory of us.
I'll never erase you, never move beyond the orbit of your memory. I exist now only to catch a glimpse of you again, clinging to a foolish hope that you're out there, waiting. My love, my addiction, it's irrational, a lunatic's monologue delivered to an indifferent stone. But it's mine, this incurable, insatiable love, and I'll carry it, a bouquet of wilting flowers clutched in the hands of an idiot, forevermore.
So, here I stand, an "idiot with flowers," speaking to the wind, to the memories, to the ghost of what we once were. It's a peculiar sort of love, this dance with a shadow, but it's mine, and I embrace it, even as I learn to let go, to say goodbye, to find my way back from my own personal drug.
