Addictions
So young, so many. All of them influence my life very strongly - positively or negatively? Terms deceptively, invitingly straightforward in their application. Who can ever claim to have accurately tallied their lives, grasping at each and every sandy grain of experience and deigning to measure out their relative weights against each other? Up and down, high and low, a million potential reasons for and against...
What has this one cost me? How much has that? What have they given me? I would not be the person I am today without each and every one of them, and despite many serious misgivings, I am profoundly proud in many ways of that person and the challenges he has overcome despite his best efforts; the friends he has gained, the women he has known, the things he has seen. I owe some of my addictions a debt of gratitude so enormous that I could never lie so wretchedly as to pretend otherwise. I have always had the presence of mind to view them through eyes heavy with suspicion yet damnably slow to react; inertia is a comfortable word, and upheaval requires new calculations be added to the ornately transcribed big book of life.
Yet something difficult is not not-worth doing because it is so.
Surely, something ephemeral is not worth fighting for when the battle you undertake eventually pits you against something enduringly beautiful.
What has this one cost me? Potentially more than I will ever know. Its time must be seen as to have come, or I will surely lose yet more in the future.
Mistakes are made and must be acknowledged, yet the past is a lethal weapon; curved and barbed, demonstrated as all too ready to tear into the heart and suspend all time, all forward progress, all dreams of a better future. I know that I will always wrestle the need for self-analysis against the pain of self-immolation, but in this case, the answer is too clear. Too obvious. Too many times acknowledged and then quietly ignored in favour of the easy answer, the quick release, the simple relief.
The answer is clear and the path is easier than I think. If I don't walk it, no one will ever be to blame but myself; no one can help, no one will care, no one will notice. Life is cruel and justice is blind, but the blindly rapacious will suffer for their inability to realise the familiarity of the path they walk while the observant emerge with fewer scars. Isn't it time that I put my knowledge of the correct answer to use, instead of shunting it down the line to another day, another excuse, another relapse, another disappointment? How many kicks in the teeth before words of blood-stained and hard-earned wisdom are finally enough to tip the scales?
You stupid asshole. What a waste it has been.
Goodbye. Good riddance. Grow up.