The Magician’s Addiction- EE
The seventh installment of my “Edmonds Entries” series.
My brother and I helping to renovate our childhood home in Port Huron, MI
We’re sat in a brown room dressed by a half kitchen, island, conference table, and an electronic white board. I chose the chair closest to the door with a good view of the room. If I felt the need to zone, a window was squared at my one o'clock -prime gazing location. The table filled with mothers and daughters, but no sons. I haven’t decided if I enjoy that.
Stapled packets make their rounds as the leader pops on a TedTalk about addiction. “I’m not addicted to anything,” I think. But I’ll have a listen, to help the others. The first definition he gives is about an impulse to engage in behavior we know to be destructive, because it gives us relief, and the urge and action of continuing to return to that behavior regardless of said knowledge of destruction. I shift my legs, this sounds a bit like Ed. A bit like the growls of an empty stomach. The following statement from this speaker was to bring attention to the fact that he had not mentioned anything about drugs or substances alike. This definition of addiction, the most accurate one according to his research, can be a label for anything which fits the parameters stated. His first example? Food.
Next, he was on about schemas, the experience-built lenses through which we view life. Some schemas believe that they do not matter, they will amount to nothing, or that they are helpless, amongst many others. The mothers and daughters took to sharing, expressing their thought schemas and how they came into them. I heard and listened to them, waiting to understand my own.
Then, it fell before me, like the first flake of winter’s fall:
“I am a burden.”
I am a burden to everyone around me, even myself. Another soul to care for, another person to please, another mouth to feed. And all at once, there it was, another piece of the puzzle. I had used restriction in part as a way to be literally lighter, to be less heavy, to be less of a burden.
Ultimately, if I disappear, no one will have to carry the weight of me, the weight of who I am.
I froze my face in efforts to stop any creeping emotions from seeping out. I felt this great sense of heaviness while suddenly being known. It was like I’d been an infant stuck inside a room with no light, too ashamed to move an inch, then suddenly, someone barged in and flipped the switch to see a woman naked, crying on the floor.
But at least it wasn’t dark anymore.
I was seen and shook, and I didn’t like it much at all. But I loved that Ed felt it too. And he doesn’t much enjoy the light, being the vampire that he is. A victory in nakedness, as we lie there on the floor, is a victory,
nonetheless.
