04/23/2020
To those struggling with addiction, you are hella lovable. To all those who love an addict and want to understand addiction more, I hope this helps ❤️.
To the Addict I Loved
You sat outside my door during my bulimic episodes. Not to stop me. But because even with a piece of wood between us, you wanted me to know I wasn’t alone. Eventually I let you in. You saw the puke and empty wrappers. I expected you to leave. With tears in both of our eyes, you pulled me close and kissed my forehead. You told me you loved me. Love cut through the shame, and for the first time in my life, I no longer had to wage my war in isolation.
You showed me your veins and told me your darkest secret. You expected me to leave. With tears in both of our eyes, I pulled you close and kissed your arm. I told you that I loved you. Love cut through the shame. For the first time, you started courageously battling your addiction from love rather than for love. Like all of us, we needed to be loved when we felt most unlovable.
I’ve replayed moments like these searching for answers of how someone as strong as you could lose that war. Here is what I’ve come to understand.
Addiction is the physical symptom of the self-hate you’ve learned to interpret your uncomfortable emotions to mean. You’re taught to distrust those inconvenient feelings. To ‘fix’ them. To ignore them—to ignore your heart. When you can’t turn off your ‘negative’ feelings, you think you’ve failed. Crippling perfectionism leads you to avoid trying at all, perpetuating the practice of chronic self-hate and avoidance of your life. Until you've practiced avoiding your life so much that you can’t face your life anymore. You “know what you’re supposed to do”. but you can’t do it. You’ve ignored how you feel so often that you’ve lost touch with what you feel—you’ve lost touch of who you are. Is it really surprising that you eventually turned to a physical source to explain why? Addiction becomes that explanation.
The problem didn’t start with addiction. The problem started with perfectionism fueling beliefs of fundamental inadequacy. The unrealistic expectations to be someone you’re not. The well intentioned help that shames you. The shame that isolates you. A world that tells you your inconvenient emotions are something to fight, ignore, and change. But your heart is too big and feels too much to be able to sustain a toxic positivity without resulting in an all our war between your head and heart. Truth is, those strong emotions are the only thing strong enough to save you. You don’t need to make them go away, you need to learn how to understand painful emotions as guidance for you, and not Information about you. You don’t need to fight yourself, you need to fight to be yourself. You don’t need shame and punishment. You need to know you are still lovable. The addiction you really must fight, is the addiction you have learned of hating yourself.
Wherever you are, I hope you know, you are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known. And even that’s an understatement.
-T
