I’m sitting here trying to remember. Not that I could ever forget our amazing conversations, with the perfect words at just the right times. Or how this thick and fluffy blanket of comfort would settle on me whenever I sat down next to you. Or the soft flannel of you shirt rubbing against my face when we hugged.
All these, and a million more I can remember.
But I’m sitting here trying to remember when I became an addict, a masochist. When I started lying awake nights you weren’t there trying to defend myself
against waves of nearly physical pain. When did I start sitting in a room, just sitting there, staring at your name in the Contacts on my phone. When did my mind start stopping me right in the middle of every happy moment to remind me that you weren’t there.
I can’t remember.
I’ve always believed, no known, that I would not become addicted to drugs or alcohol. I’ve never had much of an obsessive mindset, almost to the contrary to be honest; I tend to be bad at finishing what I started.

But today, if I was in the right room, I could stand up and say, “Hi, my name is Sam and I’m an addict.”

I am an addict.

I’m an addict.

Once you say those words once, it’s not so hard to say them again and again and again until they seem to lose their meaning.

Well, I wish I could have lost their meaning. Because I’m sure there was a time I thought about other things, I just can’t quite put my finger on the memory.
Please don’t think I’m crazy or weird or worst of all silly. They call these things crushes, or flings, or just “things.” Never something. Never addiction.
I can remember when we sat in the park, in the swings, and watched the stars twinkle and forgot why we’d come there in the first place.
I remember telling you that you were too good for that one.
I remember realizing you wouldn’t call me when you were bored or sad on a Saturday night.

But when did it all become a tape stored in my brain? One I could just stick in the VCR and play over and over, hearing your words, seeing your face, and thinking that maybe just for a moment that I wasn’t imagining it.

Just a silly teenage crush you say? Tell me it’s all been said before, tell me I’ve yet to describe an emotion not so cliché it could have walked out of Hollywood on a red carpet. Say what you want, doesn’t make me feel less like there’s something broken inside. Doesn’t help me curb my addiction.

Doesn’t help me remember.

I know I need to remember, that’s the key, I just know it. Remember how it started so I can forget. Pinpoint a single moment in the past so I can erase it all in one fell swoop. That’s all it will take. Just stretch the fingers of my mind out, stretch out and touch it. If I can remember, I will know. I will whether it’s an addiction or an accident. If this is grade A heroin or some street conglomeration of old sleeping pills and stale pot.

If I have a chance, or no rehab in the world can cure me. If time will heal all wounds, or only shine a harsher light on the raw, searing gashes.

Call me melodramatic. But melodrama is for the expression of emotion what seven layer cake is for pastry baking, way too over the top, but if it were anything else, it would feel just wrong.

You can’t have a wedding without seven layer cake, and I can’t get have chance of getting through this without melodrama.

Now I’ve told you my story.

Hello my name is…and I guess I’m an addict.

Doctor, can I be cured?