There was a book. A lovely book. The only book. I worshipped that book. I lived for it. My mind revolved around every little event, every hour of the day.

   It

          Was

                     My

                               Addiction.

The first time I read it I was immediately hooked. I would focus on it for hours, sitting, lying down, standing up, any position that allowed me to keep my eyes on it. It didn’t matter what I had to do, the book came first. I spent days not even talking to people if I could help it, all for the sake of absorbing more. I would laugh, I would cry, I would loathe and love. Every little emotion that I might have missed over the years, or thought that maybe I knew was finally real as I read. Nothing had ever reached or touched me like how this one small collection of pages was.

Then the unthinkable happened.

I made it to the end.

The only word I could describe myself as in that moment was ‘lost’. I don’t think I even felt sad, just…lonely? I felt like someone I loved just died, honestly. In a way, I was mourning. I even came close to crying thinking about how there was nothing I could do to change how things were. Depression clouded everything I did for about a week, and I could barely function. What’s worse is I just instinctively knew that there’d be nothing more. No more books, no more stories, no more fun and interesting arcs, everything I lived for for the past week and a half just...ended. And me, I felt like a part of me ended with it.

Yes.

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Yeah, that’s right.

Yeah. Yeah, a part of me did die. And I’ll never ever get it back.

And yet, with that sacrificed part of me, a ghoulish obsession started to grow. You could call it desperation, really. You see, after being in shock for those sad, lonely days I had a realization. If I wanted to get that piece of myself back, and if I couldn’t get something new, then why don’t I just go back to my beloved old. If all I have to do to resurrect myself and become whole once again is reread this one, beautiful book, then really how bad are things anyways? In fact, isn’t that just great? Yeah, it’s great.

And so I read and read and read my little heart out. I lived it, I breathed it, I dreamed it. I felt the ups, the downs, I sympathized, I raged. Happy, sad, mad. My life was the book yet again. And yet, I still couldn’t get the same feelings and high as I did the first time. There was a small empty feeling all the while…but even that could be replaced, at least a little bit. My mind was filled to the brim with theories and repeated remembered phrases that just wouldn’t leave, and my obsession grew with every read. And, of course, in my obsession new nuances were brought to the surface, epiphanies that I never even could have grasped the first few times the words graced my eyes, and I… my mind couldn’t take the realization.

Ignorance is bliss, and what’s been noticed cannot really be unnoticed. Newfound injustices, newfound horrors, newfound atrocities being revealed and repeated, thrown into my face again and again. How could I not have seen? Weren’t they obvious from the beginning? Why wouldn’t they have been? Why didn’t I care about these things before? The things I loved were all being warped and molested, laid bare to show me what I desperately didn’t want.

And so-

Against my wishes-

Against all wants-

I had to see it.

I had to.

And so I’d read. And read. And get angrier. And angrier.

Yes.

Yes…

Ignorance was bliss.

They’d hurt him so much. My favorite. And they’d hurt him. The unfairness. The suffering.

But I can’t stop.

I need this. This story is me now. It’s a part of me now. So I’d just keep reading. And rereading. And regretting. And hoping. And wishing. And noticing. And dying a little inside.

And then the end came. Only… this time it was both me and the book.