Killing Moon

I started smoking cigarettes again. It was a while ago. Right after my big breakup with my evil ex, I lost that quantum of control, that sheer little bit of luck, discipline, and habit that kept me from backsliding.

I failed two classes.

I had my surgery.

I've needed to write, I should've been writing, but ... I couldn't get my thoughts organized, corral my mind long enough to get them on a page. I sat in that bed after the surgery, my thoughts buzzing, groggy and not too mobile, but I couldn't write. I'm smoking as I write this. Keeps me from having that low-dopamine feeling, the intense boredom and disaffection that comes with using a substance to temporarily climb out of the hole I'm in.

Things are good. I have a girlfriend who is genuinely great. She understands. All of it. It's incredible. I've been graduated, though there are some more bureaucratic hurdles to jump. The only thing left to do is get a job and become the adult I need to be, that I'm scared of being. I take on so much anxiety when I'm sitting on a threshold, as I am right now. Liminal spaces, where I'm not who I was nor who I will be - they make me feel lost.

I took this month-long sabbatical, which I'm now nearing the end of. I stay with my friends and my girlfriend, away from the grim silence of the lonely apartment I'm still paying rent on. It gives me an immense comfort, to have the community I'd never dreamed was possible to have. At the same time ... am I hiding? Am I dissolute? Am I now again the slacker I worked so hard not to be anymore? I don't think any of those fears hold factual truth, but they point to my fear of becoming who I was. Y'know, a smoker, a liar, an addict, a burnout. I don't want to be him.