No one tells you about the itch you can’t ever quite itch.. or the thoughts that you can never settle.
The reoccurring movie that plays in your head of the moments that you bonded when you were high and felt more grounded than you’ve ever felt before. Tied to this perfect relationship so imperfectly. Feeling needed and wanted, warm in an embrace of endorphins and serotonin falsely elevated by the last hit.
No one tells you that you’ll never love that way again or that you will feel the way you feel.
No one tells you that letting go of the person you got high with is harder than letting go of the drugs sometimes.
No one tells you that just because you’re clean, things aren’t easy, or clean.
No one tells you there’s an ache that some days you can learn how to mask it, pushing in deep into the depths of some part of you you’ve compartmentalized long ago when you decided enough was enough. Did you decide to get clean? Or did the world decide for you. Did it decide that enough was enough. Or that the bliss you felt when you inhaled, injected or snorted wasn’t real and it was time to wake up.
No one told me it would almost end me.
No one told me that once my body learned to produce its own happiness that I slowly began to appreciate the sun in my face, so much that I refuse to wear sunglasses, for fear that it might dim the colors again.
No one told me that I would have strangers tell me I laugh too loud, too frequently, as if I care.
No one told me I live on my own time now, not a scheduled determined by how long the fix or baggie would last and if I had enough money to get another.
No one told me about vacations and international travel.
No one told me that every day further away from the high… I feel more alive.
No one told me I would still miss the idea of you, but that life was getting so good, I could recognize that it’s just an idea. You are no longer the fix, but a passing whisper of my past.
No one told me the freedom I would feel.
No one told me I should have never tried once, but no one expected it would turn out the way it did either.