The diary of obsession

It starts as an innocuous exploration, an appeasement of curiosity. Then it takes over your life, becoming the driving force for your existence, the reason for your living, Take it away and you react like a child who is denied his favourite toy—pained, angered, abandoned and petulant in varying degrees. Rejoined—it’s like the universe has come alive again.

You find pleasure in everything around it. You worship the ground it dwells on. Every day you say, “I breathe for you. You are in every breath I take.” You spend every waking hour thinking about it, how to get closer, how to bridge this gap. It’s inconvenient, it’s distressing and it’s unacceptable.  A glimpse, a whiff, a brush, anything will do; you’ll gladly feed on crumbs. Then just this much will not do, you get greedy, you want more. Every hour, there is a need to sate the inquisitiveness with action. It’s like an overwhelming passion; the one that sets the soul on fire and torments your life. Every moment apart is like drawing in ragged breaths of life.

The hunger quickly multiplies like a rabid disease. The more you feed it, the more it demands; it’s mutated and mutilated. You notice that everything around you falls to the wayside. There are signs everywhere—forgetfulness of mundane activities, lack of communication with others, sloppiness in other tasks, yet it’s like you’ve been consumed by the all-encompassing force that commands your existence.  You can do nothing other than obey its calls, your will has no say, you are the subservient slave who has to acquiesce it’s every demand.

You realise you need to pull back. “This is not healthy,” you tell yourself. It’s a struggle of wills, an intense battle between sanity and obsession. You do everything to pull back—you try not to acknowledge its existence, you deny and deprive yourself, you bury yourself in work and menial tasks but it is a gnawing presence within, scratching, itching, wanting to rise to the surface. You call in for reinforcements, you medicate yourself and look for an alternate source of outlet. It’s easy for a while, you learn to ignore it yet you know it’s there, biding its time, waiting for the moment when you’ll be vulnerable. One day, the need returns, more ravenous than ever, angry at being denied for so long; it doesn’t take kindly to rejection. You are desperate now—you need satiation; “One, just one,” you plead with yourself. And another voice screams, “NO!”  The agony is too much to bear— you shut your eyes, your ears, your mouth but the thirst still beckons. “Just this once, NO! Don’t do this to yourself. Just this once. No! Don’t do this to yourself.” The chant is on a loop getting louder and more aggressive each passing hour. In desperation, you lock yourself up, cut yourself—let the bad blood flow. 

It’s a never-ending battle. Each day brings it challenges and torments. You’re learning to live with it.