Witt's End

  Some nights it’s almost a panic. An absolute discomfort to close my eyes. It’s not usually on nights when I’m overly stressed. It doesn’t matter how much exercise I had. But there’s often a mild headache. It’s just a pounding when I close my eyes. Flashes of images I hate are right there. Heart starts taxing me. Breaths get faster. Pounding is felt. Chest gets tight. Open the eyes and it disappears.  So I read and write those nights. Quietly. Almost compulsively.  Running from the feelings beyond my control. One or two nights a week there’s no sleep at all. Most of the time it’s barely into the next morning I’ll be tired enough the eyelids get heavy enough to close themselves. For four-five and half hours I’ll toss and turn until I’m awake. And my day starts again. Insomnia. It’s a bitch. 

I don’t think the average person realizes what ending addiction really means. But it’s something that’s been weighing on my mind. And I’ve got it down to one phrase. Recovery is simply choosing to live with the pain.  That’s it. It’s that simple. And it’s sucks. I’m not going to say it isn’t worth it. But it sucks.  I just want to say that being in recovery from addiction is almost always hard. It slowly gets easier but it’s always hard. It’s hard because it didn’t begin because life was great. It began because life was hard, and we needed an escape from emotional, mental, or physical pain. We numbed, pushed past, or detached from the pain with a physical crutch. But what we thought was medicine, coping, treatment, turned to poison in our hands. In our chemistry it takes over. So now instead of just escaping, or numbing we’re seeking. Maybe we can function as an addict, or maybe we can’t. Newsflash, most of us can’t. So other things pay the price. Our health, our relationships, careers