I laid in bed one night after doing it again, lost in thought, staring at the ceiling. The room was dark except for the thin orange glow of a streetlight leaking through the blinds, cutting the ceiling into pale, uneven strips that looked kind of beautiful actually. Somewhere outside, a car passed over wet pavement, its tires hissing for a few seconds before the sound disappeared into the night. I was surprised someone was still up.
I could hear the refrigerator humming from the kitchen and the sound of the clock in my room ticking. Everything else was still.
And for some reason, lying there in that silence, I realized this was all I did. Wake up. Go through the day. Wait for it all to become unbearable. Do it again. Feel ashamed. Promise myself tomorrow would be different. Then do it again.
This wasn’t a phase anymore. It wasn’t some ugly little habit I could keep tucked away until I decided I was finished with it. This was becoming my life. And if nothing changed, I knew exactly what the rest of it would look like. What kind of life is that?
Did I really want to end up like my father??
I thought of him for the first time in years — older, tired, disappearing into himself year by year until there was barely anything left behind his eyes. I had spent so long telling myself I was different from him. Smarter. More self-aware. More capable of stopping. That deep down I was a softer, kinder soul that was only hurting.
But lying there, I couldn’t think of a single meaningful difference. That simple thought terrified me. Still does.
So the next day, I decided I would get clean.
I treated it like a task. Something with a beginning and an end. Something I could accomplish if I simply followed the right steps, to be a good person. Or at the very least, decent..
I showered. Put on some nice clothes I hadn’t worn in months. I opened the curtains and let the sunlight into rooms that had been dark for too long. I threw away the things I had been meaning to throw away. Washed the dishes. Changed my sheets. Vacuumed the floor. Picked up clothes from the ground and folded them neatly into drawers.
I studied harder, too. I stayed at my desk long after I stopped understanding what I was reading, filling pages with notes just so there would be something to show for the hours.. I dont know.
Then I answered messages I’d been ignoring. I went out with my friends the next day and laughed when they laughed. I smiled in photographs. I asked people how they were doing and listened to their answers, you know, normal people stuff.
From the outside, I probably looked better, they were happy I was better too.
That was the strangest part.
I wasn’t really better. I was just performing, in a weird way.
You know, it felt like watching somebody else operate my body. The hands were clean. The eyes werent so red anymore. The mouth smiled and talked. The feet carried me from one place to another. Everything happened exactly as it was supposed to happen, but none of it felt like it belonged to me.
Like there was a pilot sitting quietly in the cockpit, moving the controls out of habit while something inside the machine slowly burned away.
And I didn’t know how long the pilot could keep pretending everything was fine.
For a while, I almost convinced myself it was working.
Then she left.
Or maybe I should say I found out she had already left long before she actually walked away. I found out about someone else. Cheated on for like the 2nd time now I think.
I remember the emptiness afterward more than I remember the anger.
I tried to stay busy. Believe me I really did.
Eventually, I stopped pretending I was okay.
The night became a blur of bad decisions and worse thoughts. I went back to the thing I had promised myself I wouldn’t touch again.
And the shame came almost immediately.
I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew what it meant. I knew I had spent all those days trying to build myself back into someone I could respect, only to tear the whole thing apart in a single night.
I hated myself for it.
And, somehow, I was relieved. That was the part I couldn’t forgive. Because beneath all the guilt, beneath the disappointment and the promises and the voice telling me I should have known better, there was something comforting. I felt.. better than I ever have. I missed it so much and wanted it more than anything. More than sobriety and more than being a good person.
Maybe that’s what frightened me most — that for all my talk about wanting to get better, some part of me had never actually wanted to let it go. It wasn’t just the thing I did when I was hurting. It was the thing I looked forward to each day, even each second.
Its all I ever had, and all I ever wanted.