Incredibly Easy

Of course !  That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own. 

I understand the addiction now. I never did before, you know. How could a man do something so self-destructive ? It seemed that it would be so  to just not take that next drink, to live, to rise, to follow a schedule. But, Just stop. It’s so simple, really ?  But as so often happens with me, that I astray myself from seeing the truth of the matter.

I see it now though.

Every day, I tell myself it will be the last. Every night, as I’m falling asleep in my bed, I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll book a flight to home, or Goa, or maybe some other place. It doesn’t matter where I go, as long as it’s not here.

And then she touches me again, when I'm asleep and my convictions disappear like smoke in the wind when I wake up to find no-one beneath me.

This cannot end well. That’s the crux of the matter. I’ve been down this road before—you know I have—and there’s only heartache at the end. There’s no happy ending. If I stay here, I will become restless and angry. It’s happening already, and I cannot stop it. I’m becoming bitter and terribly resentful. Before long, I will be intolerable, and eventually, she’d leave me. But if I do what I have to do, what my very nature compels me to do, and move on, the end is no better. Is it not better to accept that this happiness I have is destined to self-destruct?

Tomorrow I will leave. Tomorrow I will stop delaying the inevitable. Tomorrow I will quit lying to myself.

Tomorrow. 

Just one last time. Just one last fix. That’s all I need.

And that is why I now understand addiction.