Addiction is a funny thing. An unrelenting, nasty little niggling in the back of your brain. Poking around your thoughts, bothering you incessantly, and just generally pissing you the hell off.

Sometimes, I think, it's easier to just listen to a voice that's always been there, to just do what feels right.

Sometimes, I wish I had the balls to just finish what I'm always starting, to just push a bit further, squeeze a bit tighter, bite a bit harder.

But nobody every said I was brave.

Or at least, nobody that matters anymore.

When I was younger, I used to shut myself up with painkillers, choking down each candy-coated promise like it was salvation incarnate, hoping to relocate permantently to the Land of Instant Gratification. It's the closest to gratitude I've every known, and I'm not a very patient person.

When I gratuated into liquids, it never helped, it just slowed me down. Or at least it slowed my heart down, enough times for me to wonder what's left of a liver, enough times for me to know the cold that's sweeping just below my feet, waiting for me to fall again and not bother to breathe this time.

And beneath all of that, is a boy that I hate with all of my heart.

A person who'd look wonderful in pieces,

A curse if there ever was one.

Besides all the bullshit, I'm a simple person. I crave. I need. I get rejected. I get pissed. I get violent.

No,

I get vicious.

Violence, the absolute affirmation of life, the strongest reminder that I was indeed living, not just surviving. Bleeding, gashing, shaking on the floor, our memories ground into the concrete, my words hanging in the sweat-thick air. Oh yes, there was magic in there. Inane and racous, primal and wonderful and fucking stupid. It was everything. It was the only thing.

We felt so out of place on a bed, even with his knife at my neck, even with my skin horribly bare in the light, even with my eyes hiding from his. And beyond all that, I wanted it more than anything in the world. More than my idiot-child's dreams, more than my other addictions. This drug was the worst of all, if only because the false promises had a voice this time. A perfect voice, a soft voice, a voice that hurt because it was so fucking sweet. A voice fit for a lying son of a bitch.

I look back at every peice of skin that's been draped over his arms and feel a hate that almost makes me happy. Jealousy, vindication, utter disgust running rampant in my veins like the purest, clearest poison. Violence is a part of me, a vital part of me, breathing and living and shitting nothing but confused, mindless anger. And it feels orgasmic, to hate, to inflict, to destroy.

In my dreams I see him in tears, like he was one night, curled around the toilet bowl like a lover. I see him helpless, I see him shaking, I see him in the short bursts of helplessness that I've clung to like old photos. The edges are worn, the picture is shit, but the memory...the memory is wonderful. I wonder what it's like to be on the other side of the knife, to be the one with the camera, to be the one laughing between gasps with blood on my hands. I wonder what it's like to be God.

I wonder what it's like to be free.