Peter McFeely

I have a confession to make.

I am an addict.

I now know that I have always been an addict – for as long as I can remember – though I have only recently come to accept it. I used to think I was normal, the same as everyone else. But the past few months of have taught me a lot.

As with all addicts my urges grew and grew inside me, over time I shifted from wanting something to needing it. The hunger. The satisfaction. The unbridled joy. The feeling of momentary wholeness that rushes over me. It is the contrasting dimensions in which I exist which make the sensation all the more palpable. While the monotony of every day life drains me, the people I meet bore me, the drab monolithic inner-city architecture stifles and restricts me, absorbing my hunger and appetite for life like desert soil consumes the first drops of the breaking drought, the thought alone of sating my hunger energises me. Cradling my ‘tools’ in a clandestine manner, my pulse steadily quickens, a thin film of perspiration coats the hinges of my body and the palms of my hands. I run my eyes over my drug of choice, whatever the weekly flavor may be. Prepared for bliss, the excitement I envision is almost enough to dissuade me from consuming, as I fear that I will somehow be left unsatisfied. Nevertheless, I dive in. At first I am measured, deliberate, calculated even. I think slowly and methodically, painting a picture of an alternate world against the backs of my corneas. As the chemicals kick in and the effect takes hold my self-control unravels. I slide deeper and deeper into something I know is not real. I retreat into a world of my own, immerse myself purely in the immediacy of the hit. Seconds turn from minutes to hours. Most often, I have no idea for how long I am under. All I know is I am happy.

Until.

A phone rings, people laughing walk past with barely a glance in my direction break my thoughts, a roll of thunder licks the night air, the city soundtrack crescendos. All too suddenly I am snapped back to reality. Longing to have remained under for just one more minute. Willing myself to resume my trance but knowing it is futile. I slide my goods back into my coat pocket, my bag, whichever vessel protects them from the eyes of passersby who seem to see everything and nothing all at once. And once more into the breach. The grind can not be escaped for more than fleeting moments at a time.

Addicted. Pitied. Pilloried.

Supposedly being helped but much worse off than I ever was. Supposedly being protected from myself, others being protected from me, but in truth I am suffocated and constrained. I am told my addiction is being treated. Or managed. Or watched. I am reduced to an erroneous piece of mis-typed code in society’s formula for perfect happiness. One too many one in my binary make-up. But who is to say what is right and wrong? I can now admit I am an addict, but leading a less wholesome existence is not something I will countenance. While the world descends into ever-blander hues, the grays of one community blended into the mauves of its neighbours, their inhabitants living replicated off-the-shelf lifestyles, I live in absolute technicolour. For a while society was prepared to tolerate me, but it was as I became more and more ensconced in my urges, more eager to live as much of my life in azuls and canary yellows and glace cherry reds as possible, that I was labeled. Termed an addict.

A label, as I say, I am happy to wear but for what it means to me. A Star of David which represents my steadfast beliefs, not which identifies me as someone to be persecuted, to be isolated, to be exterminated. But society believes I need to be cured. At no stage have my friends, my family, the endless reams of medical professionals who traipse up and down, round and round, observing my every movement with a supposing harrumph and scratch of their graduation present ballpoint pens, actually asked me if I want to be cured. I don’t. Though to be more specific, it is more that I don’t see what it is which needs to be cured. My addiction pleases me. It doesn’t cause me any physical harm except for instances in which other people are not sufficiently equipped to interact me. Should it not be they who are cured? I am still capable of financially and emotionally supporting myself, performing my job, of maintaining hygiene, eating properly and exercising the right amount. In fact my addiction drove me to do these things more diligently. Yet still society termed me as a hazard.

All because I am an addict.

An addict of books.

Addicted to the power of words to transcend. To afford an imaginative escape route from urbanity. To the story the powerful writer weaves for his readers. The art of bringing an audience on a journey and retaining attention, while others place emphasis and enjoyment in stripping information and stories down to their most basic and simplistic format. The celebration of construct, diction, juxtaposition. Standing firm against a world who wants to drop vowels, bastardise vocabulary, ignore the techniques developed over centuries. A world which is too lazy to spell out what it means, such that it must live in endless acronymity. Books tell stories – be they of fictional characters, of real people and events or even of endless facts, figures and scientific data. But they engross me. While everyone else rushes from point to point, processing morsels of information, devoid of context, I devour the written word. I do not hunger for snapshots of the world, a jumble of letters vomited on a social network. I do not wish to have all instances or objects shown rather than described to me. They do not cause me to conjure my own emotions. To spark my synapses. To imagine. To dream.

And more specifically, perhaps the crux of my addiction which has marked me out for persecution, I long only for the physical, printed version of the written word. The soft glean of ink on parchment. The feel of pages between my thumb and forefinger. Cheap, smudging newsprint. Crisp, oversized bestsellers. Glossy magazines that crinkle under their own weight. The yellowed, brittle leaves of a second-hand novella purchased by my Grandfather on a trip to France in the early 1950s. The hollow tap of my fingernails on a classic hardcover. The reassuring density of my tome, one which fluctuates dependent on my latest vice, indicating the length for which I may enjoy the imminent folly, but never evidence in itself of the enjoyment or enrichment which I will derive. These factors combined ignite me. They take my thoughts on coruscating journeys. They comprise both what I read and what I am directly experiencing, encompassing my direct surroundings, activating all my senses. I am not trapped within a fingerful of inches of glass, aluminium and electronic chips. My addiction liberates me. It frees me to experience the world.

And yet. I am an addict. And I must be cured.