relapse as a mirror

content warning: This essay addresses sensitive topics, including addiction, alcoholism, suicide, and relapse. Please proceed with care and prioritize your well-being while reading.

Today's essay is free for all! Want more? Subscribe for $7/month—less than a fancy latte—for full archive access and to support me as a Black woman creative. Not ready to commit? Treat me to a coffee instead <3

This piece is a bit longer than usual, so if you're reading it via email, it might appear clipped. For the full experience, simply open it in your web browser. Happy reading!

Pro tips:
🎧 Press play on the article voiceover to listen to me read the essay.
❤️ Tap the ♥ if it resonates—it shows your support and helps the algorithm spread the love.
💬 Share your thoughts in the comments—I’d love to hear from you!

---

I've spent so much energy perfecting my ability to go numb and disconnect from the internal and external disarray that this time around, my spirit must have said enough—it's time to feel it all. This experience leaves me feeling equal parts the adrenal rush that makes me believe I can do anything and the urge to vomit and vow to never do this again.

The summer months were…grueling. I was a zombie in my own life, prayerful others wouldn't be able to see how expeditiously I was crashing. Crashing into old ways of being. Crashing into old ways of moving through the motions. Crashing into myself while wanting to do something different but possessed by patterns that proclaimed to help with the pain, though they just prolonged it. No words can paint enough of a picture of how despair overtakes you when the crutches you once used no longer keep you upright.

I struggle with a lot of things. In these struggles, I've created new ones. Addiction is a word that's stigmatized heavily, and instead of digging for the root to see what's there, we point and gawk at the fruit. And when it's rotten and even a bit bruised, we are quick to discard it.

When I began drinking heavily in college, I never questioned the abnormality of blacking out regularly and having fragments of my memory snatched from recollection. Why was I so eager to down countless cups of ‘pirate punch’ and chug Old English 40s with reckless abandon? Maybe, somewhere deep down, I knew the disconnect and darkness were what I wanted. At such a young age, I didn't understand my emotions. Truthfully, I'm still learning them now. When my emotions did appear, the only thing on my mind was how to quickly and effectively squash them out.

People say, "Everywhere you go, there you are." Even though I've traveled extensively and now live in a different country, I'm still being met with the same old me. It wasn't until recently that I reflected on my eagerness to run away. While others may see it as an insatiable appetite for exploration, it is sometimes no more than an Instagram-worthy attempt at escaping the realities of the world. But the fact is, when you're busy fleeing yourself, there is no safe space. There are only spaces that gift you clearer visions of what you've been avoiding seeing.

When I was 16 and my paternal grandfather died, I stuffed my mouth with one too many breakfast sandwiches to count. I was up against a void and determined to fill it. While the way I operated grew different, the void has continued to be a demon I face off against. Sometimes, it seems I'll do something or really anything not to feel the emptiness that life leaves me with, even to my detriment.

My precarious connection with food has been easier to overlook than my drinking. It's something I keep in my back pocket out of fear of being perceived as someone with a handful of addictions, though that's precisely what I am. I am a person battling addictions that sometimes feel bigger than the thing I was endeavoring to do away with in the first place. Over time, I've tried new things, hoping they would be the magic cure to my problems, but they only produced more.

Shame can feel like a safe haven when you spend substantial time there, but I've lived long enough to know now that my shame is also killing me. Shame is considered the lowest emotional frequency, sitting at the polar opposite end of enlightenment. Yes, shame sits below fear, grief, apathy, and guilt, but all of these still fall within the 'Level of Physical Force,' which also includes desire, anger, and pride. Conversely, the 'Level of Spiritual Power' contains courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, and, of course, enlightenment.

source: hugtheuniverse.com

Do I really want to operate consistently within a space centered around forcing things rather than aligning with what should be or, better yet, what is happening? I can only imagine how many people have sacrificed their spiritual power because shame and its accompanying foes caught on and wouldn't budge.

One night, after drinking in secret yet again, I walked by what looked like the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) signage I'd seen at random across the States. But this time, I wasn't in the States, and I don't even regard myself as an AA girlie, so I kept moving. But then I circled back, and I stood outside of this building with plump tears on my cheek, wanting to take a step forward and inside, but the shame rendered me immovable. I was a statue sprouted up on a sidewalk- the image of someone stuck between where they needed to be and where they currently were.

Something remarkable happened before I eventually paraded through the brightly lit entranceway into a gathering for folks struggling with substance use. I accepted that I was in a crisis, and even if I wouldn't tell someone I knew, I needed to tell someone. I chose acceptance at this moment, even if it meant accepting that I was more than down bad. So, three rows from the back, I plopped into a seat, trying my best not to disturb the meeting in progress, but more than anything, not to be noticed.

Here I was, a Black girl in a brown country, sticking out like a throbbing thumb. People stared, and I strained to smile through the exhaustion that had been riding my coattail, but I couldn't. There was no energy left for smiles. Then there was the person who came to my side and whispered, "Buenas noches. Quieres una bebida? Café, té, agua?" I don't even remember what I had, but I recall the offer. Sweet. Human. Powerful. Their way of saying, "We know you don't want to be seen, but we see you."

I sat, begging my brain to work and translate the Spanish words radiating from the mouths of folks who took turns coming to the podium. I mostly just cried and looked down into my lap until the person at the front concentrated their attention on me, asking me my name and inviting me to share. So here I am, face contorted with the weight of the previous days, now at the front. I willed every piece of myself to speak the language I've been learning. I piece together bits of my story, which comes out incoherently, but maybe they understand. If energy communicates the way people say it does, I only needed to show up. They would see the guilt. the shame. the grief and pride radiating over me like the steam that gathers on the mirror after a hot shower. There was a different sort of language, one unspoken, shared by all of us in the room.

Everything else above this line was written on November 30th, and up until yesterday, I'd let it sit in my drafts, unsure if I'd ever share it. It is now Saturday, January 4th, and I've just returned home from a morning spent outside with my dog, Lennox, and the company of bell hooks, specifically my treasured copy of Sisters of the Yam. I was initially introduced to it through a Sober Black Girls Club literature meeting in the past. Now, I pull it off my shelf when I'm most in need of an elder's guidance in this process of self-recovery, which goes so much further than my drinking and all the other problematic habits I've picked up along the way.

When I tell people I don't drink, I'm mostly met with shock. Sometimes, their audible gasp and stretched eyes say, "What do you mean you're not participating in this thing everyone participates in?" Only every now and then, especially when people respond "ever?" to my declaration of sobriety, do I say, "once upon a time, yes, and way too much."

In Sisters of the Yam, hooks shares an excerpt from Stanton Peele that addresses the prevalence of addiction, and I resonated with the following line in particular so much.

"Addiction is not an abnormality in our society. It is not an aberration from the norm; it is itself the norm."

—Stanton Peele

It's challenging to address addiction because we've become so familiar with it being present, and it's a superb shapeshifter. It has no specific look and waits for us in every corner of our lives. Social media. Sex. Exercise. Drugs. Alcohol. Love. Gambling. Cigarettes. Gaming. Shopping. All these things we believe we have control over, but unfortunately, are usually controlling us like some puppet attached to unraveling strings.

As hooks writes, "a culture of domination undermines individuals' capacity to assert meaningful agency in their lives," soon after referencing how substance use and abuse is something we, as black people, are painfully aware of, a legacy that can be traced back to our ancestors who were subjected to a life unimaginable during the transatlantic slave trade. She continues, "It makes perfect sense that in a society of domination, where black folks remain a majority of the oppressed and exploited, that folks will seek out those social mechanisms that enable them to escape, that they will look for ways to numb pain, to experience forgetfulness."

There are so many things I want to forget that I've at times forgotten what's worth remembering. For the past few days, it's come to my awareness that I've been blurring the years 2023 and 2024 into each other. I can't really recall what took place in one versus the other, and it's left me flipping through my mental file cabinet to tidy up and organize.

I spent most of 2024 shut down. Not even low battery mode. But like that point in time where your phone begins to go dead when it's at 45% and hardly holds a charge—a tried and true sign that a new phone may be on the horizon. A phone with more space. A phone that hasn't already been filled up like the digital graveyard it is. of apps you never really needed, hundreds of virtually identical photos that you painstakingly went through only to decide your nose is too wide, text threads with people who didn't deserve your number in the first place. Like a phone that's seen better days, I'm used up. My battery is chronically low, and unless something is cleared, I won't be able to properly function.

Right now, I'm thinking of the late journalist Leanita McClain that hooks references, and Bebe Moore Campbell wrote about in the 1993 essay ‘To Be Black, Gifted, and Alone,’ nearly ten years following McClain’s death by suicide in her early thirties. Campbell ends her essay by leaving us with the question McClain had previously asked in her own writing: "I have made it, but where?"

When we sat in that liminal space between the Christmas holiday and welcoming the New Year, which always begins the countdown to my January birthday, I had to wonder what I was doing. My life lacks a general type of direction that I sometimes long for. While I can't speak for other people, especially those who struggle with addiction or their general ability to be present, I've just wanted to know if things will be OK.

The things that have sucked me in, trapping me in a vacuum of bad habits, gave me a false feeling of comfort. I was OK, even if only very briefly. With their support, or should I say their ability to suppress, I thought maybe I won't always jump when I hear a car's horn. Maybe I won't feel such scorching shame when I tell people of my past. Maybe I won't always seem so ungrateful for what some call a miraculous second chance at life. Maybe the undercurrent of depression won't be my baseline. Maybe I won't blame myself so much for what has and has not happened. Maybe I won't always be so fixated on what has gone 'wrong' that I'm blind to what's right. Maybe what others call a blessing, I won't mumble under my breath is actually a curse. In many ways, I've made it further than I ever thought I would, and yet I'm still here asking, is just making it enough?

I'm sure I can be exhausting to love. I know this because it's exhausting loving myself, and I rarely, ultimately, genuinely do. But I also know that the love I am able to share with others is the best of what I have to offer. When you convince yourself you are unlovable for whatever reason, you push others away, even when they have the best of intentions. I self-isolate and do the things I do not from a lack of love but out of an abundance of it. Because more than anything, I don't want my hurt to land on them. I wear so much of it on my sleeves that I fear if they even bump into me, it may leave a stain they're unable to rid themselves of.

Reading Akwaeke Emezi's Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir was a haunting affair. I don't know if I had ever witnessed a level of vulnerability that I both admired and wanted to look away from. I tried to look away because I felt seen. It left me considering my own bodies of work, how I often have shared from the depths of my core, needing to empty myself out of words and emotions, even if it meant others would never really be able to see them or me the way I intended.

I never want people, specifically those I love and who love me in return, to read what can be perceived as my ‘dark thoughts’ and look at them as a sign that they have not provided me with enough light. It's precisely because of their light that I can write. It's because of their light that I am here. It's because of their light that even though I'm riddled with painful and prickly thorns, beautiful things still blossom.

As Akwaeke shared,

“I learn that I will disappoint others with my lack of wellness, of capacity, of ability to explain to them the intricacies of what the fuck is happening with my flesh that renders me unable to perform the way I used to. I forgive myself for letting people go, because I am trying to hold on to myself."

Ending connections and being willing to walk away from others, especially in this past year, has been difficult amidst so much loneliness, but essential. I don't have the capacity or desire to constantly tell people how breakable their proclaimed resilient kamil really is. Instead, I've distanced myself. Because it saves me.

Saves me from darker thoughts.
Saves me from dreams of pills I've never consumed but have been prescribed and are sitting at the back of my closet, out of my sight but not out of my mind.

Saves me from going to the store down the street and buying a bottle just because my flimsy brain told me it would be best.
Saves me from going to a street vendor and purchasing a loosie for 7 pesos.
I don't even smoke cigarettes, yet sometimes the stress of it all tells me I should.

Saves me from pretending I have the power to fix their lives when I'm still busy trying to piece my own back together.
Saves me from making myself even smaller,
when what I really need now is room to breathe and to expand.

When people read this, they may once again ask why I share so much and caution me to leave something to the imagination. They will tell me that no one should suffer in silence, but some people want me to suffer in silence. Or, as a long-ago crush once said, "You're not the only one with problems." And he was right; he still is.

I'm not the only one with problems, and maybe that's exactly why I'm writing this. Loneliness, whether by physical proximity or the other ways it can present itself, like assuming you're the only one struggling, is risky business. Writing this reminds me I'm not alone. It may remind you of the same. I'm writing this because I must. I'm writing this because it's medicine, and I'll take all the healing I can get.

question for reflection:

In what ways have you tried to avoid your emotions or fill a void in your life, and how has this shaped your path toward healing and self-understanding?

---

📸cover photo by Ankhesenamun

✨Never want to miss a new piece? Become a free or paid subscriber today!