The Only Hug

It hurts—

the same ache, day after day,

predictable as breath,

demanding its dose like clockwork.

At first it’s quiet,

a polite knock I can still ignore.

Then it hammers,

relentless,

until the door inside my skull splinters

and the only thing that quiets it

is the thing that made it.

It was born when I was small,

too small to understand consent,

something forced,

that never left—

a seed planted in secret,

in the dark,

It waited.

Grew.

Learned my name.

Years later, when the memories rose like black water,

flooding every corner,

drowning the child who still lived inside,

I reached for the first relief—

a bottle, a line, a needle, a hit, a feeling 

whatever would push the water back down.

It worked.

For a moment, it mothered me

the way no one did then—

softened the edges, hushed the screaming.

So I kept returning,

feeding the only thing that ever answered

when the little one inside cried out.

Now it’s lived in me longer than I’ve lived without it—

not a child I never asked for,

but a child of the wound,

fully grown,

rooted too deep to rip out without bleeding out.

Motivation visits sometimes,

a cruel guest who leaves before dawn.

This is my only reliable escape,

the medicine that once saved me

now drags me farther

from every shore worth reaching.

I was raised in its smoke,

taught its language before I learned my own.

I miss them—

the ones who fell first,

swallowed whole by the same false comfort

that promised to keep the past buried.

Maybe that’s where I belong too,

trailing after the ones I couldn’t save,

the ones I couldn’t follow fast enough.

I’m sorry.

Sorry to disappoint you all again,

sorry for the promises the addiction broke for me,

sorry for the person the child inside

never got the chance to become.

Every bridge I’ve burned still smolders;

every hand that reached to love me

is a ghost still walking away.

Hope?

I buried that word years ago,

next to the kid

who trusted too easily.

I watch others climb out of graves deeper than mine

and feel nothing but proof:

I am the exception,

the one the medicine won’t release,

because it was never just a habit—

it was the only hug

the wounded child ever got.

I hate myself for letting it in,

hate the child who didn’t know better

than to take the only balm offered.

I hate this rotting thing I’ve become—

scar tissue fused to syringe,

a reminder that won’t peel.

This is just how it ends—

not with a fight,

not with a fall,

but with the quiet surrender

of someone who once believed

the poison was protection,

and now can’t remember

how to live without it.