Maybe We Should Go Back

Deaths of despair

Sort of just want to cry these days. So much weight pulling me down. I'll get above the surface just long enough to remember how wonderful it is before I'm pulled back under. Not under to drown. Under to fight. Under to kick and tunnel my way back up until I'm so exhausted every part hurts.

I wouldn't be able to fight without Suboxone. It's changed my life. I didn't think I wanted to live without drugs. I didn't know how I could, how anyone could. How can you face each day with no chance of escape? But now it's like everything that drugs took the place of is coming back, and I'm remembering how to live without it. Like dancing again. Or taking Ethan to the park and letting him swing for the first time. Or even just eating healthy and feeling how good that makes you feel.

I feel like there is no gray area for me to live in. One side is complete and utter despair. The other is lightness and joy. The world has taken away the in between place of dullness and monotony and apathy, the place of the every day. Because now every day is a catastrophe or a tragedy. Some shit show that will play out on the news or in the corner of headlines: 4,000 dead today, in small print. You have to choose to succumb to the despair of it or rise really really far above it, but there is no option to live on autopilot anymore. Drugs will give you the illusion of rising really high above it, but it's only an anesthetic so you don't have to feel the pain of dying in despair, which is what you're choosing to do. That's what they call suicides and drug related deaths: "deaths of despair" The cause of death: pain.

If it wasn't for Suboxone, I'd still be dying. I finally remember why I've never given in. Once you taste the goodness of life, even just once, you can't forget it. You can't ever stop searching for it. You can't just give up on it.