Addiction

I wanted to reiterate my thoughts on addiction...
If we can partake sparingly, again, we earn the privilege to partake. It is, perhaps a necessary evil, but I am drawn to the ecstasy and the comfort that comes from your venom.
Remember, it takes a little of the poison to perpetuate the cure...

Addiction: the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming.

Dependence, fixation, enslavement, crush, fetish, fascination, infatuation, preoccupation.

Addiction has long been a derogatory term. It has often been associated, exclusively, with drugs. Here's the thing I have learned about addiction as I have traversed the highway to hell:

One becomes introduced to something in particular that fascinates them. It is, perhaps a crush, or a fetish, or maybe it is that thing you recognize as the element you have been missing your entire life. In the beginning, this element makes you feel utterly amazing. For the time being, it is just a simple infatuation. The more of this wicked material you absorb, however, the more you become fixated on it. Attempting to carry on with your life on a daily basis, you unfortunately find yourself becoming preoccupied by it's very existence. It is beauty and death all wrapped up in one pretty little package and before long, you are in a psychological battle with the object of your affection. You realize that this affinity  will eventually consume you, voraciously and unrepentantly, so you muster all the strength you have left, and you stop. You rely on your friends and your family to get you thru the withdrawal, and if you are lucky, you have this prodigious support system that never judges you, holds your hair back when you vomit, reminds you everyday that you are stronger than this thing eating you alive from the inside out, and you grieve and you reconcile. And when all the dust clears and the cobwebs have been mercifully extricated from your mind, the clarity is magnificent.

 If the object of your affection is still, somehow present in your life, you must learn to live with it, because, one, living without it is simply not an option, and two, if you CAN learn to live with it, you've gained the control that you lost in your dependence. I've always favored the word independence. It is the antithesis of being dependent on something. It is a state of being I am forever trying to aspire to. 

So, little by little, you let your beloved back in. You do this with complete authority and confidence that you've got this. And here's my solution to the dilemma that is addiction: If you can partake of your poison in a disciplined fashion, without all the negative attributes associated with the enslavement of said addiction, then you have earned the right to occasionally partake. Consider it a gift you give yourself for being so strong!!!

"Dear Goddess, give me the strength to enjoy that which I love so much and do not wish to live without for the rest of my life. Help me to stop dead in my tracks before I cross that invisible line, so that I may observe, and savor the ecstasy of this beautiful nectar in it's purest form."

Drugs are easy to stay away from. People, not so much. Chicks dig bad boys. It's almost ingrained in our DNA. It's not that we want to be hurt, they just fascinate us, so. It has been relatively hard for me to determine if what I recognized when I first saw my beautiful inclination was addiction or love. After all the reconciliation I had to do to come to terms with my infatuation, I realized that I am extremely intuitive, it was love and I recognized the soul of a man I have loved for a million years and most surely would continue to for a million more. He is, however, my addiction. When he looks at me, I feel warm and intoxicated. It is the greatest feeling of comfort the world has ever known. When I do not see him, I am wishing I was. When he talks to me, which for a reason I can only attribute to complete and total reticence, he cannot seem to do so well, while he seems to have no problem doing it with others. LOTS of others...I am happy. My beloved is not the master of articulation by any means, and we have actually discussed the  "somewhat exhausting communication problem" at length. But there are these other ways we communicate and when we do, and I know that no one else has a clue what that one odd word in the body of a mass email means, I laugh, and my heart swoons. *Yes darling, I am grateful for the knowledge that you are reading this, too. Thank you for the clandestine confirmation.

Days like today, when the object of my affection lets slip his empirical knowledge of my birthday and offers to share a little piece of himself with me, trust me, I want to bite off all that I can chew. Let me deal with the consequences tomorrow, but I wont. I will simply savor the flavor, partake sparingly and only enjoy him a little, because God, forbid I lose the privilege of enjoying him, all together.