You have lived your life beneath the stars waiting for the
moment when you could meet a person to share the view with. Little did you
realise that the cosmos would find themselves sitting beside you and not above
you.
Corny I know but incredibly true. We all eventually end up
meeting a person who becomes as important as the stars above us. They begin to
fill a space in your life once left empty until before you realise it you have
a shared future, or at least hope you do. You become addicted and cannot wait
for your next hit.
When suddenly you are left to go cold turkey you find
yourself suffering from such severe side effects from the withdrawal that you
start questioning whether you can go on. You find yourself going through
stages, each one worse than the one before, until eventually you realise that,
to be colloquial, “you got it bad”.
Stage 1, Positivity: you are convinced that you can survive
the withdrawal and come out stronger than when you started. You fill your mind
with the idea that you were fine before so you will be fine after and that you
do not need something to define you. At this point anyone who would meet you
could hazard a guess that you are doing well and will clearly get by…
That is until Stage 2, Despair: you begin to realise that
the positivity is all bullshit. There is no way to continue without that fix
and you would willingly risk anything to get it, even do things you were
previously against. Surviving seems impossible and trying to envision what your
life was before seems close to impossible. All you can think of is your life
with the addiction, everything before seems nothing more than a haze.
Stage 3, Aggression: despair ultimately culminates in anger.
Your emotions know no other outlet and you find yourself lashing out at
everyone and everything. You ignore people, pick fights, lose your temper,
storm off and are just generally peeved. It seems the only logical way to cope
with the ever growing frustration as a result of being apart and there is no
way out.
Stage 4, Withdrawal: Eventually you become disgusted with
your behaviour and ashamed of how you have treated those around you and so you
withdraw into yourself. You lock yourself in your room and stare at the blank
laptop screen fearing even surfing the internet as you might find some reminder
there of the “good times”. So you choose to sleep, barely eat and just hope the
time passes by. There really is no other way out of this.
Stage 5, Insomnia: eventually you find that you have slept
so much that you cannot possibly sleep anymore. This time you fill your sleepless nights
with all sorts of brain-wracking activities hoping to forget your pain, forget
the gaping hole of darkness within your life that threatens to consume you. Keep
busy, forget the pain, it may just eventually go away. The question you are
left wondering is whether you do want it gone… insomnia leads to many and more
questions that lead to the same answer: you would do anything for one more
pull, one more sip, one more kiss….
What comes after stage 5 you may ask? I have no idea but in
my sleeplessness I find myself gazing reverently at the stars hoping the cosmos
above can give me the strength to overcome the loss of the star I found upon
the Earth. Gazing at the stars above I cannot help but think how sad they look,
they have lost all their lustre now that my gaze has fallen upon another far
brighter star.
Corny I know yet incredibly true...