I may not know your name. But I KNOW you. I am you. The hands of addiction have broken you open, exposing you, wounds from a fight, you both won and lost at. The defeat and triumph having come at a price you wouldn’t have agreed to, had you known then, what you know now… I know you didn’t just decide one day, that living every day of your life looking for the next fix, was what you wanted. I can bet “addict” didn’t pop into your head as a child, when asked what you’d be, when you grew up. It doesn’t really matter how it got started though, does it? You’re still here battling addiction, feeling pretty much alone. I know that some of us lost almost everything, while others literally did lose everything. If you haven’t, I promise if you walk this road of addiction long enough, addiction takes EVERYTHING, ALWAYS, EVENTUALLY. I know the regret you have for continuing to give in, every single time, when you fight yourself and swear, “never again. This is the last time.” I know the longing for yesterday that tugs on your heart every day. It is a longing that weeps, “if I only knew then what I know now, I would’ve chosen a different path.” How the most painful point of your day, is every time your eyes meet your eyes in the mirror. How regret and guilt nibbles away at you.
I want you to know, there is redemption from the consequences. There is restoration to be found. For the one who’s still struggling with addiction who, by the grace of God, hasn’t made it to the ending Daniel did quite yet. I know the stigma. The stigma that leaves youth, men and women to die alone in cars on backroads, in porta potty’s, on bathroom floors. The stigma of addiction that kills and leaves families in utter devastation. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. There is no shame in desperately yelling out for help. Find yourself a lighthouse and cling to it, as if your life depends on it. It does. I promise, there is nothing so “hopeless” about you, that makes it so you can’t recover. You are so so worth it. Once you make it out of the “fog”, life is still so beautiful. This I know. As long as there is breathe in your body, there is always hope.
