Addiction: The Deception

It killed me that the only time I felt alive anymore was when I was dead to the world. The temptation to question the sense and reason in denying oneself the pleasures of life in order to preserve and sustain an otherwise joyless existence was yet another urge I failed to resist.

Who was I doing it all for? Striving to retrieve the relative peace of my yesterday, when the silver linings still reflected earnestly in these eyes. When such pleasure, such feeling was beyond our grasp, and we accepted in resignation what shreds of satisfaction and scraps of fulfilment were thrown us, whilst the echoes of faith still swayed within our desperate heart.

This is what we were fighting for?

This is the coveted dream for which we sacrifice so many opportunities for contentment, no matter how brief? Were all the days of gentle weather worth every weekend in the sun? To live without rain, but to never feel the heat of the summer –was this really something to cherish?

I had promised myself no indulgence for just one weekend. I had calmly assured myself that this was something we could do, that I could finally prove there was some trace of will left within this mind. And now I was asking why. The very moment my grip loosened, the misery came flowing through, its momentum growing ever swifter as it gathered up the scattered debris of dejected loneliness and bleak frustration. My feeble intentions were no more than paper soldiers in its path, as the blackness gushed forth to crush their frail attempt at resistance. I turned aside at the impotence of my defence.

Shame seeped through my useless body, streaming past derelict corners of my bloated being until it reached the great black jet of despair that oozed relentlessly onward. Shame that I could not even claim the strength to save myself. Was I even trying? And how could I try when all it ever took was the one question I feared the most – why? Why not just throw myself in? Why not just drown in this ocean of self-indulgence, would we not then at least know we were alive?


Why, then, did we not feel this way once we were fully submerged in our satiation? Why then, when the cold air of sobriety cleared, did we see always to an idyllic future of moderation and restraint? Why were these promises made if all we truly sought and desired was the hedonistic haven from which such oaths were spoken?

I loathed to explore such avenues for I feared I knew what I would find. The truth.

The truth is what stares back at us every time we look into the mirror and know not whom we see. The lies are in your head. The lies are the fallacious thoughts that claim this broken man cannot be you, that you are in truth some lost prince with grand destiny that has simply yet to reveal itself. Embrace these lies and you shall never know the ecstasy of your peers….

I felt an insurgence within me that I was certain had long since died, and dared challenge these un-claimed sentiments. For though I felt the familiar resonance of a repugnant truth as it settles in the pit of my stomach, I could not ignore the utterly contrary foundations of understanding that led me, time and time again, to vow to break our regime of nihilistic complacency.

What are you fighting for?

I was fighting for myself. And though I knew not who I’d become, or who I used to be, I knew without equivocacy that I had once been a better man. That I had once been a man. I could not respect what I’d become, I could not love what I’d become….

We were a fool! We lived every loathsome day awaiting a redemption that would never arrive. We waited and waited until we wasted all that we were. We had neither the courage nor the fortitude to admit to ourself that this damnable world would never let us inside. And yet, loyal as a hound, we waited still. And we starved, as we starve now, as we would continue to starve…

Just one weekend.

Slowly, and yet seemingly instantaneously I began to recognise this “truth” for what it truly was.

Hunger.

I had been a fool. And, perhaps, I would continue to be a fool, but I would be blind no longer.

I had found my most feared truth: I could no longer trust in my own thoughts.