“Four hundred forty-three days,” I said, bold.
“So almost a year and a half? That’s when it gets hard,” my friend replied over the phone.
He was asking about my sober number.
Addiction is a confusing thing.
We all have a vice, but our perception, reaction, and understanding of that vice varies.
It’s haunting, really—
the way it makes you question whether it’s ever even affected you.
I remember once saying I didn’t trust people who didn’t drink.
As if I could trust myself when I did.
It was hard to call myself an alcoholic.
I didn’t drink from morning till night, so how could I be one?
But addiction’s definition is like a cornfield—
and you are a beanstalk,
surrounded on all sides,
foreign, but rooted.
A million alcoholics,
not one the same.
Then he said, “Then my grandma died.”
Silence flooded the space between us.
“That’s when I relapsed the first time,” he added,
his voice cracking behind some invisible rubber wall.
The world is a tough place.
An open gate to the same fate.
Addiction feels like this, too.
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