A letter to my drug of choice

Fiction, mostly. Explanatory note at end of story.

I.

When I wake this morning, my hunger for you hums in my cells before I open my eyes. It is so loud that I wonder how I could have been sleeping a moment ago. I would say you rise with the sun for me, except that I also crave you when I wake in the night. 

Sometimes I use you before breakfast. Sometimes, on very bad days, I use you before I even get out of bed, wrapping myself in your warm haze. 

But today? Today is a good day. Nourished as I am by connections with friends and a string of better days at work, today I feel strong. The sun is shining and my cup is full. I can make it through until at least lunchtime today without it, I tell myself. I can encounter reality today. I feel light. I dance in the shower.

It’ll be okay to do a short line on my lunch break, though, the voice continues. I’ll still have done really well. I think of all the drug-free hours between now and then and I feel my blood cool and thicken. Kia kaha, girl. I choose earrings that sweep my neck and make me feel brave. I will use caffeine if I need something to get me through. 

And maybe a lil bump around 4pm, as my energy fades. To carry me to hometime. Yes, that’s sensible. I don’t want to set myself up to fail by fixing on impossible goals.

And of course a lot of people need a little something at bedtime too, to help them sleep. That’s fine, that’s normal. I will allow myself that. Just mustn’t leave it too late.

But nothing until lunchtime, right? Right. 

Negotiation completed, I mentally shake on the deal. A random shuffle delivers me the perfect song first time. It feels like a sign and I step outside, lit up with hope. 

II.

By 10am my need is distracting and intense and I am struggling to stay on task. Despite having more caffeine than is sensible for me, the promised “short line at lunchtime” becomes several long ones at a quarter past eleven. I sit in the Prayer Room at work and look at them, tidily assembled on the screen of my phone, carefully crushed and chopped into perfection, glowing faintly white in the dim light. 

“I don’t have to do this,” I tell myself. “It isn’t too late to make a different choice.” I place the phone carefully on the floor, lean back against the wall, centre myself. I take a beat, a breath.

Then I pick the phone up again and bend my head to it. Of course it is too late. It was too late months ago. 

The adrenalin, the relief and the shame are so synchronous and intermingled I can’t tell them apart anymore. I take a moment to dwell in the beautiful absence of need before returning to my desk. “Are you okay?” a colleague asks. “So good!” I say, and mean it. Oh, that afterglow. 

III.

I don’t feel proud of what happened at 4pm. I lost myself in you. I guzzled and then I spaced out. I was late for a meeting. 

It is of secondary importance now, all of my life that isn’t you. For a stark moment I see that I am out of control, then I turn away from that knowledge and snuggle back into you. 

IV.

This evening, I tell myself: I will give it up tomorrow. I will allow myself just one final short line to ease the cravings and get me off to sleep, a final goodnight kiss. Then I can have a healing night’s rest and wake up tomorrow truly ready to stop.

I am so sure that Tomorrow Me will be ready to stop. I have been sure of this before. 

In the morning, my cells will hum for you before my eyes open and I will tell myself: Not a line until lunchtime. And I will fail. I will send you so many lines, my darling. I will leave you voice message after voice message. I will look for too long into your eyes and I will stroke my thumb against the bristle on your jaw with undisguised tenderness. I will huff your discarded jersey the moment you leave the room. I will listen through the wall as you sing your daughter to sleep. My heart will fly again and again to Te Ikaroa to gather wisdom and insight from the stars; and it will fall back into my chest, wet and warm and still filled only with longing. 

When someone is addicted, the literature tells us, they will lie to themselves and to people they love in order to continue to access their drug of choice. I have told you so many truths, but I lied to us both when I said I don’t know what addiction feels like. 

So I sit at your kitchen table, running your dog’s silken ears through my hands, and because you are there I am radiantly at peace. My body’s insistence that I need to be wherever you are is unrelenting, but the payoff when I can give it what it wants? Ah, that is the sweetest thing I know. To be near you is to drink the nectar of a transcendental homecoming, and I will tell any lie I have to.

Meanwhile, you search the cupboard for the right container to put me in – you know it’s in there somewhere. It has your sister’s name on it and a good, tight-fitting lid. 

Explanatory note: 

I wrote this short fiction earlier this year when I was having obsessional, addictive/dependent romantic feelings about a friend. I stepped fully into those feelings to write this, and tbh it was fucking brutal. To let myself touch into the part of me who could lose herself so entirely, and to really listen to her and engage deeply with her experience – that distressed me.  

But it felt important for me to do it, because I felt, and still feel, a lot of shame about those feelings. So much shame! Embodying the voice of the part of me who felt these things, and speaking aloud in her voice here, is one way I can try to give her enough love to wash the shame away. Part of loving myself means not disowning or turning away from any part of myself, even the messed-up ones.

But it also means making responsible choices about when I give them a platform, and that's why I didn't publish this when it was quite real for me. As per my previous email, things have shifted for me such that I don't think it'll ever be real again. I'm sure I'll still read through the script sometimes but I think ultimately I'll always decline the part. But we'll see, hey. Old habits die hard.

(The part of me who felt this stuff FREAKED OUT over my last post, so that's another reason to make sure she's feeling heard at the moment. I feel her energy stirring in me.)

I also want to acknowledge that my experience of addict-like behaviour is not comparable to substance addiction.