Nobody ever talks about the other end of somebody’s bender, the hand that holds the hair whilst they puke, the extensive length of involuntary phone calls, of passive-aggressive, alcohol fueled disputes.
But it was my turn to talk, so I was told.
I was standing at my first ‘AAs’ codependent group, with
nothing to say. When in fact I had plenty to tell, words would pour out of the spout of my bottle, now that
the cap had busted at the rim.
I wasn’t the abuser or the abused, I didn’t need a hit of cocaine, nor was I floored drowning in my
own sweat of cold-turkey blues.
I can’t remember when it first began, when I had become the succumbed crutch to the avid
drinker. I do remember that shortly after, it had become a repetitive pattern in my life, the core frayed
flaw of a thread,
hanging off the edge of most of my relationships.
I had become quite addicted to falling into the same role of co-dependency.
Whatever high-vis sign I was wearing, shone so brightly to passerby’s who needed a person to project their darkest selves onto.
Twelve years in and I was suffering from addiction.
I had become a slave to my own dire inflections of the drink. Of course I didn’t need a sip, my senses were not desperate for that familiar haze to take over. I never needed to feel beaten, to taste the sorrow looming in the corners of an open bar, the end of an empty glass, and the glazed look on their
faces.

I needed
to feel needed.

I indeed, became the addict.