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Fault Lines
Reflections of a Struggling Addict
Addiction is a house built inside my head, but it has not always been there. At some point in a distant memory, there was something else in its place — not as imposing, not as soul sapping. It has been such a long time that I can barely recall what the landscapes of my soul looked like in its absence. You know those central city blocks that change so dramatically in such a short time, that one day you are driving past, and the next it feels like you are in unfamiliar territory. You struggle to remember the building on the site where the shiny new store is now sitting, but you can’t. All you see is a new building that assumes permanence, just like the many before it, whose memory has now been erased.
But this house in my head is built differently. Unlike the shiny new city building that is reborn every odd number of years, it has endured. And it consumes my present with such persistence, that I can’t picture it not being there in the future. I remember the early days when I laid the first foundations and this house emerged from the ground it now owns. In hindsight, I see how awfully long it took me to get it to where it is today, and I still come around to fix a lock here, or touch-up some paint there.
Every time I step back into my conscious mind to look at this thing I built, I ask the same question.
