my addiction to you

A Story by Summer Stevens

from behind the addicts eyes

It was the most toxic thing that could happen to anyone. My addiction started 5 years ago.

I don’t know much about addiction but I do know you, and I helped pull you from the real thing. I wouldn’t let the demons keep you, not this time. I fell back in love with an addict, fully conscious of the fact this time. I discovered how your head ticked even at my own expense sometimes, I held you through ever battle every downfall and every step back. Never did I leave your side, I couldn’t. I put everything and everyone above you, and you liked it that way. Until things started to change, while you were getting better I was getting sicker, while I built you back up you slowly started tearing me down, and neither of us even knew it at the time.
All I wanted to do was save you, let you feel what life could be. You were getting better, you became stronger and of all things you became sober for the first time in a long time, all because of me…. At least that’s the thought I’d like to hold on too. But you started needing me less, when I started to need you more, but I was unaware of the damage that was breaking me inside; like an addiction things were always up and down the high was unreal and the low was unbearable.
I remember how bad it got sometimes,the screaming, the fighting, crying so hard to the point of not being able to breath; where it scared you enough to stop and hold my hand for a moment. Spitting words that cut deeper each time, filled with poison. hell the poison from your words was a good enough high for me, you were still there, even if you were breaking me down even more just to hold me close as if it never happened at the end of the night and I would forget the pain, at least until the next time
I still had no idea that my addiction would eventually cause the worst affliction.
Nothing mattered but you, and I thought maybe I was your new addiction … But you beat that one too… And here I am, detoxing myself alone. Shaking, screaming, listening to the tiny voice on my shoulder telling me how worthless I am how disgusting I was and sadly that voice was all the words you spit at me
Just like your drug you tore me down from the inside out, making me hate myself, i stopped caring about my family, and things that mattered to me I cut off my friends I did anything to please you, to keep the high going, to avoid a fight.
You isolated me from anyone that could pull me away from you, yet I did it to myself because once you realized I was sick, that I was addicted to you, you knew that you couldn’t help me, that you couldn’t fix what you broke because your addiction to heroin became my addiction to fixing you…