'I Am Not A Monster, I Am An Addict'

This was a piece of prose published to the community website of 56 Dean Street, Europe's busiest sexual health clinic, as part of their Wellbeing programme, on the 7th of January 2016.

Available here.

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// I am not a monster. I am an addict. \\

A couple of years ago, I twirled and danced through the community that you and I both know so well. I fell upon faces and names and so many lovers, twisting and writhing in the dark. And yet even though I met so many, and danced under moonlit nights holding hands and bodies, I could never quite find someone game enough to hold my heart.

So it should come as no surprise that in that darkness, that loneliness, I fell upon something that made me feel – for a moment, at least – whole. Something that made me feel better. Braver. Stronger. More open to love.

In a cloud, it engulfed me, and though I scrambled for a door through which to escape, I could never break that exit. And so I stayed, in sickness and doubt, trapped between four walls and heavy curtains too strong for me to lift.

Addict. That is what I’m called. It’s a name for the feeble, the seediest among us – the scum, the low, and the lesser. It turns heads away and tells people that I’m gone, distant, ill, forsaken, aggressive, possessed. They leer. 

But I am not possessed. I am not gone. I am not a monster. I am an addict. 

There’s a poltergeist hanging over my shoulder: a vampire suckling at the nape of my neck. It hides under the mattress between these four walls. It dampens the light from outside and holds the blinds shut. It whispers cruelties, knots my stomach in twisted agonies, and keeps me inhaling that acrid vapour. 

It tells me I’m not strong enough, not good enough, that no one could ever hold my heart.

Can you understand that? How I’ve ended up this way? Would you dare to try? To think of loneliness and sorrow, and the isolation of our community – one that, despite being so brave and ferocious to fend off the most terrifying ills, struggles to reach out and fold warm hands over hearts?

We’ve been ripped and torn asunder more times than we can count – so is it any wonder that we flee connection? That we sometimes chase away intimacy in a smoky haze and inebriation? That some of us, though we’ve fought for so long, might wind up lost within four walls, fed lies by a vampire, crawling in the dark?

I am not torn. I am not lost. I am not weak. I am an addict.

I’m tired of reaching out, only to be pushed back on the bed by this ghostly thing. This nasty creature intent on holding me still, telling me I’m worthless. I want to burst out from between these walls – to feel the light on my skin, so euphoric, to taste the air and hear flurries of birds chirp in their flight over sapphire skies. 

I want all of these things. I want to feel the sun again.

But I need your help. 

I need you to break down this door. I need you to rip the shutters open until the light beams down on my wrinkled face. Then whip around and hiss at my spectre, that if it’s going to linger, it better be ready for a fight. Pull me up from my nest of bones – if I slip, hold me steady, if you can. Haul me over to the window, and remind me what the sun feels like. 

Then I can begin to heal. I can come out from behind these clouds. I can learn to dance again, and look up at those sapphire skies. 

Because I am not a monster. I am not lost. I am an addict.

We have fought greater ills than wicked ghosts. We are stronger from our pasts. You can hold my heart in your hands.