my addiction

My heart is still crazy with jitters in my chest. But I can still go on. When I can't breathe, I will stop and gasp but will still go on. This is my life I am talking about here. This is all of it. If I fail, I will not be given a replacement to try again. I will do everything necessary to drive myself, to haul myself, to push or pull or heave myself, out of this rotten place. Here is only where you live to die. I am not going to die here.

I have an addiction. It is not alcohol and it is not drugs. It is very much the same as if it were those things. It will keep me locked in a rotten place. It will keep me safe from happiness. It will keep me miserable and have me justify, falsely, all the causes of this misery. I have an addiction to self-pity. It is an addiction I must fight because, deny or not, it is fighting me.

It may very well be too late to restore the damage I have caused between Kate and I. I must accept that as fact. What I will not accept is living to allow any sort of damage as that to happen again to anyone. I am a person capable of being loved. That is to say, I have very often made it easy to love me. I am beautiful; I am love. My heart has been molded by God. And that makes me also a person capable of giving love. I have shown this heart to the world too many times to doubt that. In my writing, I have shown it. I will not be crushed under the rule of despotic fear. This is my chant now. This is what I will inversely pencil across my forehead so that every time I look in the mirror I will see it again: "I have a capacity for love and will love and will not be ruled by fear."

I resume my therapy with Tom this Friday. We will begin to peel away the layers that hide the core of this disorder. It will be found to be something psychological or physiological, or some combination of both, but whatever it is I will not be daunted by what I may find. The remainder of my life hangs in the balance here. If I fail, I fail because I was afraid to succeed.

This is for the next Kate who walks into my life. Had I been quicker, this Kate would have found a much different John, more like the one she thought I was. But that is the past now. And this is what I now know from that experience: I am a person deserving of another chance. Although everyone deserves to be given this, this has less to do with the chance being given than what is done with it once it is given. I will find my Kate somewhere out there in the world. Everything I do now I am doing for her.

John.