[Very Personal]

“I don't do drugs. I am drugs.” 
― Salvador Dalí

At 14 I was told to be cautious of drugs, and I took it to heart, but what they didn't say was that there are all sorts of gateways and maybe if I had known that, I would've seen your words as the addictive substance they were, and maybe I wouldn't have let them infect me like they did,

and like the drug they were they seeped through my skin until they were all I could think about and all I wanted to live off of, and I let your words control my actions and I let them derive your selfish pleasure from my quiet desperation-

and like any drug I should have been able to just stop, but the crooked, simple drug of eye contact had already conditioned me into the proper mentality, and you were able to play your games and you were able to play with me

and you were able to take every rotten piece of willpower I had left

and you were able to detach it from soul, and every time you gave me that perfectly worded high complete with its utter destruction, I was a body separated by desire of happiness and desire of attachment being suffocated under your hands

and it's so like an addict to relapse, and I always knew that,

and it's so like the insides of an addict to convulse,

but I don't know if it's normal that the withdrawal symptoms are getting worse as the time grows longer

and it seems reasonable that an addict would fear the substance that fragmented her naivete, but there are many drugs designed to benefit health

and I don't know if it's normal that after all this time, both kinds have the same effect on my well-being

and I guess when I ask if I'll ever find someone, I'm wondering if the two pieces so cleverly coerced apart all those years ago can ever be reattached, and how?

love always, laura elizabeth