Addiction

Addiction is a perpetual shell game that runs day and night in my life. Just outside the back stage door, a carnie of indeterminate age and gender swirls walnut shells in mesmerizing patterns on a cardboard box podium. Each time the motion stops I lift another shell thinking I will find it there. No. Addiction appears and reappears where one least wants to look… where it will be hardest to root out… where it will always seem to cost so dearly to walk away from. The longer I don't see and the more I nurture and appease the unconscious in preference to objective reality, the deeper the roots will grow for a seed planted in fertile ground. Withdrawal, at times, seems the very sickness one seeks to escape.