Some of you might be surprised to learn that I've never done drugs. Never. Not so much as a puff of a joint or a weed gummy. I might seem provocative and edgy, but I'm notoriously lame and straight-laced in this respect. I've never even smoked a regular cigarette, although I was known to indulge in the odd Cuban cigar back in high school. This doesn't mean I've never been pressured. But I suppose I never cared enough about being 'cool' in the traditional sense, or felt the need to prove myself in that way. I don't tell you this to receive praise or admiration. It's not something that really defines me, or that I judge others for doing. I wasn't raised in a strict or religious household. Quite the contrary. I grew up being exposed to all sorts of vices. There were no shortage of opportunities for me to test the waters. But I didn't even really start drinking alcohol until my late teenage years. I'm still not the biggest drinker. My self-control is remarkable.
The truth is that I knew I had a predisposition for addiction, and I didn't want to flick any switches on. I feel things deeply and try to live life with clear, open eyes. As a clinically anxious and highly sensitive person, I like being in control and I'm averse to drastically altering my state of consciousness or destroying my rich emotional landscape. I don't want to numb my capacity to feel or potentially start bigger fires. Lord knows I'm already enough to handle. Being anchored to reality has always felt safest for me. But I was always curious about how people developed dependencies to things that could transport them beyond the pain of the present. So I forged a career out of helping young people trying to overcome their addictions.
Nonetheless, I couldn't escape my own. I couldn't stave off the one thing that breeds this restless tempestuousness in my chest. The thing that leads to most of my pain. My fatal flaw is that I'm addicted to recreating first-time feelings. I'm obsessed with the idea of finding purpose and attaching meaning to every experience I've ever had. As such, I have frantic need to make everything feel as special as it was the first time. A deeply ingrained craving for nostalgia and a resistance to letting go. An overwhelming sentimentality and a longing for that which once was, and can never be again.
A return to the innocence and freedom of childhood. The way my favourite songs settled in my bones the first time I heard them. The high of falling in love for the first time, and then once more, again. The organic, unexpected meetings between kindred spirits. The magic of discovering something for the first time. The secret forests and the Queen absconding and the hidden little hollow to lay down and rest in and the fairy tales I would write knowing nothing would probably ever become of them. And then the concrete things. The buzzing that comes with a boy falling to his knees with a ring in hand, knowing someone chose to spend a lifetime with me. A lifetime of me. The look in his eyes on our wedding day. The moment I heard my healthy and beautiful newborn son cry out from beyond my body.
I'm always chasing the high of some significant moment or memory that's long passed. Trying in vain to get those feelings back and to make meaning out of what was lost. But it's futile. People change and moments end and soon only ghosts remain. Life is marked by transience. And not even memories can reclaim the things we lost. If I can't recapture them, I try to remember the person I was during those moments. How strong she was. How she walked through fire and fear. I feel like I'm losing her. Does this mean she never existed? Does it mean it was all for nothing?
This past year I tried to redefine experiences that were significant and challenging for me but could no longer be what they once were. I tried to renegotiate a new meaning. I tried to plant the few seeds that remained and grow something new in their place. But despite my best efforts, I couldn't turn them into anything at all. It seems they were less consequential than I thought. They weren't worth the sleepless nights and the anguish on the bathroom floor or the cycle of dark thoughts. Maybe that makes it worse, because I've always felt that everything in the past should have present meaning. So what do you do then?
You eradicate them. You fully and completely let go. You choose to never look back. You pretend those moments were never of any consequence in your life at all. You act as if they never happened. You tell yourself that you're better off not living in that emotional space and that you were your most vile and destructive self when you rested your head there. You forget all the sadness and confusion. The low growling pain where you wished with your entire being you could evaporate into nothing. You keep your hands on the wheel and you keep on driving. If you can't transform this into anything significant in the present, this is the only way to break those attachments. Keep on driving. Eventually you'll realize that things end up as they should. The cravings for what was will subside eventually.
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