I don’t think this is an addiction.
No, honestly, it’s just the cat.
No, really, I just fell,
No, I’m positive, I hit a table and-

I don’t think this is an addiction.
If it were an addiction,
I would have to be out of control,
And I’m not doing it five times a day,
now am I?
Though admittedly I think about it,
Five hundred times a day this-
This is not an addiction.

This is not an addiction, I assure you,
when I’m well aware that’s what this is,
When I smile and say that “I’m fine,”
I hope you come to realize that most times,
It’s a lie, and-

“No, really, I ran into the coffee table,”
I grumble to my therapist.
I’ve gotten so good at hiding this that,
“No, I’m serious” and a forced look of honesty
Somehow gets me by.

“This is not an addiction,” I cry,
When I know, deep inside,
That, again, that is was this is.

This.. This is an addiction.
Cuts not healing for three weeks,
Thinking about it for hours at a time,
Wanting the euphoria of bleeding,
On the bathroom floor,
This.. This is an addiction.

This is an addiction, I scream,
Finally taking it for what it is as my friends,
My lover,
My mother,
All yell at me to put my blade down,
To lay down,
To breathe.

They scream at me
To end this seemingly endless cycle
That I’ve been going through
For a little over five years.

The nurse practitioner I saw the other day,
Told me,
“I want you to have a list
Of thirteen things
You can do before you resort
To cutting.”

And I want that to happen.

But this..
This is an addiction.
And it’s going to take a long time to recover.

So far,
I’ve managed to stop the police calls,
The hospital visits,
Some of the more larger issues.
The ones that leave me
worse off than where I started
To an extreme.

I’m still recovering.
I think I’m always going to be recovering,
I don’t think it’s ever gonna leave the back of my mind..
But this.. This is not an addiction.
This is recovery.