What Addiction Feels Like

by Anna Erickson

So, repetition itself is torment. Addiction. The unhealthy habit of uncontrollable allowance of yourself to fall into a repeated pattern. A 9-5, 5 days a week, wake up, go to work, come home, kiss your wife, then sleep, and repeat. It's all faded, what's the point in the different titles of days if they are all the same. What's it like to motion the same day over and over and over, it’s not even living at this point, the week is a motion with no emotion. Torment is a combination of both physical pain and psychology suffering. Your brain hinders you from being in control, while physically the body is under immense amounts of stress. It burns.  Because, I know what I’ve done, I don’t like it; I know it’s unhealthy, yet still I return to it. Why? Because it's familiar. It’s what I know. It's a pain I’ve experienced. It’s a rush of pain - its pleasure. I once heard that pain is unpreventable for a human, you can’t hide from it. No matter what cycle of life you are in you’ve felt it and without experience pain you can’t experience pleasure. I understand fire. Yet, as I fall back every time to the same weary pit, at least it’s a pain I know how to cope with and how to nurse and how to love. I can feel the sting now. I hate it but I’m accustomed. I close my bedroom door, echoing a thought “it’s no big deal” as this is my everyday muse. I hum along with the pain as it fades to the background, dormant, until it comes to play again.