Addiction

Community.
It’s funny—to step into one
and feel like you should already know how to lead it.
To feel like a mentor by instinct.
A brother, a sister, an auntie.
Someone steady for those searching for family,
for the brokenhearted.

To feel half empty,
spread thin like butter across too much bread,
yet still able to offer more than words—
advice,
a simple meal,
companionship,
love.

To recognize the lost in children and adults alike,
each just trying to isolate a little less,
to be seen without being stared at.
To go from decades of solitude
to dozens of new faces in weeks,
learning how to share pieces of myself
without bleeding out—
pouring carefully, not emptying,
offering warmth without erasure.

To have worn so many masks
that my face forgot its own shape.
To have built personalities like scaffolding—
temporary, necessary, exhausting—
only to realize
that being myself
was the only thing anyone needed.

What I have to give
is love, understanding, patience, kindness.
They cost nothing.
They are renewable.
They fill my cup instead of draining it.

So I ask myself:
Is this people-pleasing or relationship-building?
Is it hypervigilance or empathy,
or simply the recognition
that I carry light
and can set it down beside someone else
without losing my own?

Vulnerability is the birthplace of change.
And I am ready.

Ready to unmask.
To unburden.
To unravel
and stitch myself back together
with intention.

I am learning and unlearning—
again and again—
that I didn’t have to do it alone,
that I don’t have to do it alone now.

To find the missing pieces.
To melt the gold.
To fill the fractures with love,
therapy,
medication,
with men and women
who see the real me
and do not flinch.

Who watch me stumble and fall
and offer hands, not ultimatums.
Kind words, not commands.

To do what my father could not.
To be who he cannot.
To repair what he did not break—
but broke in me.

To unhear and unlearn and unremember
the voice that became my inner weather:

You’re weak.
You hit like a girl.

"This is what I am paying for?"

If five thousand dollars fell from the sky—
would you catch it?
If it saved you?
If it saved your family?

That question became an argument.
An argument sharp enough
for him to regret my education,
to throw it back at me,
to call it worthless—
while I hold a master’s,
while I have built more with less,
gone further on thinner ground.

I have done more with less help.
I have survived without a net.

Emotions are chaotic and messy
when numbness finally cracks.
They arrive loud,
uninvited,
terrifying.

Feel.
Feel.
Feel.
Stay.

Sit with it.
Breathe with it.
Write it down
before it writes you.

Change what you can.
Accept what you cannot.
Learn the difference.
Find the wisdom.
Find the courage.
Find the serenity
that comes from staying.

Face the future—
whether real or imagined,
whether prophecy or trauma
wearing a disguise.

Let the other voice sink back underground—
the one dripping venom,
fed by years of abuse,
by inherited self-loathing
soaked into skin,
into muscle,
into memory.

This body learned survival early.
This brain hardened where it had to.
Scarred—
emotionally, financially, physically—
but still standing.

This mind is done running.
Done pretending
that who I am
is something to escape.

I am a helper.
I help others
and I am learning to help myself.

I do not have to empty my cup
to fill someone else’s.
There is room here—
enough space
to hold others
because I am finally holding myself.

Look for the helpers.
Be a helper.

I am a helper
who asks for help.

And I want to stay angry
because anger feels safer
than grief—
safer than the pain,
the sadness,
the loss
of what cannot be repaired
by the one who broke it.

But I am learning
to brave the depths of my own soul,
to descend instead of recoil,
to name and process the trauma
rather than keep it caged at the surface—

so the pain doesn’t live
one breath away from eruption,
so it doesn’t stay coiled
just beneath my skin,
waiting to spill.

So it can move.
So it can settle.
So it can finally loosen its grip
and make room
for something quieter than survival.

#MentalHealth #CheerMeOn #Grief #Depression #Anxiety #Addiction #MajorDepressiveDisorder #MoodDisorders #SubstanceUseDisorders

Feelings are exhausting.

To numb for twenty years
and then decide—
no more masks,
no substances,
no chemical exits,
no rotting in bed disguised as rest,
no endless scrolling pretending to be relief,
no catastrophizing dressed up as foresight,
no believing I am my trauma.

To feel.
To sit.
To stay.

To finally let thirty years arrive at once—
anger,
shame,
guilt,
abandonment,
resentment,
grief,
loss,
loss,
loss,
loss,
loss—
a heart-shattering weight
that presses the air out of your chest.

How do you resist the urge to distract?
To rush it?
To heal overnight like it’s a productivity goal?

How do you surrender control
when surrender once meant danger?
How do you trust a process
when trust has always been expensive?
When your circle is small
because survival taught you it had to be?

How do you grieve decades
inside six weeks?

How do you rest
when your world is imploding?

You stop.
You pause.
You rest.

You look for the helpers—
but you name what you need,
not what you want,
not what sounds polite.

Help can come with conditions,
but it cannot come from half-hearted people.

Cups cannot be filled,
hearts cannot be healed,
oxygen masks cannot be offered to others
when you are still underwater,
still gasping,
still fighting for air.

My heart was racing
while theirs was pounding.

And somewhere in the wreckage,
in the stillness I used to fear,
I understand the truth that keeps me here:

I want to be
who I needed
as a child.

#MentalHealth #ADHD #Depression #SubstanceRelatedDisorders #Addiction #Grief

It’s a unique kind of pain
to know exactly what help you need
and still not get it.

To be lied to.
To have care dressed up as comfort,
housing sold as healing,
promises softer than the truth.

There is no pool
to drown the sorrow
and reset the body.

No mansion
full of newfound brothers and sisters
waiting to save you.

No work–life balance—
because when your health is at risk,
there is no work,
and there is no life.

If eighteen thousand dollars
can’t buy safety,
where do you go?
Who do you ask?
What do you say

when all that comes out is—

Help.
Help.
Help.
Help.
Help.

Please.
Just—help.

Help me fall apart.
Help me put myself back together with gold,
like the pottery that breaks
and becomes more beautiful
because it was broken,
not in spite of it.

Talk.
Share.
Feel.
Survive.
Thrive.

Remember—
you are not alone.

Remember—
it’s okay to not be okay.

Remember—
it’s okay to ask for help
even when it doesn’t show up
the way you were promised.

It’s okay to advocate for yourself.
To practice radical acceptance.
To put the weight of the world
down.

It’s okay to not be okay—
but it’s not okay
to stay there.

So you look for the helpers.
You look for serenity,
for courage,
for wisdom—

but how do you find them
when grief fills your body
and hijacks your mind?

How do you grieve
when no one taught you how?
How do you sit with
what no one will sit with?
Feel what no one wants to feel?
Heal what no one healed before you?

I don’t know.
But I’m trying to learn.

I’m trying to let go—
and let go—
and let go—

of trauma.
Of pain.
Of loss.

Trying to cry.
Trying to feel.
Trying to fall apart
without disappearing.

Trying to be the line in the sand
that says—
this ends with me.

I will not pass this on.

One of our greatest freedoms
is how we respond—
finding a quiet place to breathe,
to break,
and to let someone help
put the pieces back together.

One by one.

Some of those pieces
were never mine.
My father’s.
My grandparents’.
Teachers’.
Inherited grief.

Not every piece fits.
And that’s okay.

Everyone’s just trying to get home.

But how do you get home
when home is made of fragments—
memories lost to heart attacks,
to overdose,
to anger,
to fear,
to violence,
to war?

Trauma shatters families.
War shatters everything.

Tears fall for a reason.
They are not weakness.
They are evidence.

The hardest thing I ever did
was ask for help
and try to receive it
without my world collapsing again.

Distress is not danger—
but it is a signal.

Something is not safe.
Something needs care.

And I am still here,
learning how to ask.

#MentalHealth #SubstanceRelatedDisorders #Addiction #ADHD #Depression