Addiction

It pervades our society 

We come from the womb, arms outstretched 

Just begging to be loved 

To be seen as loveable 

Special 

Unique 

If we feel consistently rejected, scared, or alone holes appear in our world 

In our self belief

In our belief in connection 

We are born with fascination for the sensation of this world

But as we go along we can lose this feeling, as the pain of this world starts to outweigh the pleasure

So we fill our aching holes with anything that can relieve the pain or increase our fascination 

If we don’t know how to shine, or are lost along the way, we forget to dream

Or our dreams feel like laundry left on the line too long 

Once beautiful, now faded, crackled and old 

Companies know this so they encourage us to dream their dreams 

To be their machines 

To trade life force for money

A consensual hallucination which will never fill the hole

You can’t fill a hole with nothing

The more we make, they more we break

The more we break, the more we think we need 

We replace our emptiness with distraction

Lured in with a promise of excitation  

The promise of happiness

Our eyes always focused on the promise of a future reward 

Like an angler fish about to feed, the companies wave pretty things to lure us to the feast

Like toys in front of our infant eyes, they constantly offer new pretties 

We don’t realise that we are the meal, not the honoured guest 

We are anaesthetised and fed upon 

Stimulated then sedated 

Then we are diagnosed and categorised 

But we are just the symptom

Consumer society is the disease

Living in our single portion lives we both crave and fear connection 

Locked in our separate concrete cubes

Living in sterility, duplicity and fear 

We fear rejection always as much as we fear to be alone

We isolate, then we agitate 

Then we are encouraged to sedate

Push down our feelings deep into our stomachs, where they burn acid holes into our souls as well as our bodies 

We are treated like soldiers one minute and children the next

First we are chastised 

Then we are patronised

The whole time feeling that something just isn’t right here 

We ache to feel less fake

We become addicted to drama 

Addicted to technology 

Addicted to the novel

Addicted to substances

To fast cars

Fast talkers

Rotating relationships 

Overwhelmed by choice we reel in the all too lit material world

Overstimulated by lights, sound and saturation, we often dream of a quiet life

But we fear the silence will start up our brains and we will truly feel the pain of living

Being sold, bought and traded, we see ourselves as objects made beautiful by other objects

Forgetting that the real gold comes from inside ourselves 

Living in the shadows, we fear the brightness of the light

But we crave to step out of the darkness 

We forget that when we are looking into darkness, we are standing in the light 

That out of sight doesn’t have to be out of mind 

We try and we stumble

And we forget our magnificence 

We have been so well trained we keep turning to look at Pavlov as he rings a bell

Salivating for the promise of salvation 

Our self belief is so thin that we fear to fall again 

Because we haven’t been taught to keep on trying

We are the feral children

Not quite wild but not quite tame 

We feel everything 

Which can be exquisite joy or terrible pain

You can’t have one without the other 

We know this really 

Or some of us do anyway 

We critique ourselves and beat ourselves

Then we punish ourselves for punishing ourselves 

Or we run to try and escape the pain

But wherever we go, there we are 

We are trained then critiqued for how we become 

Mia culpa

A guilt that never ends

It is circular, like a snake trying to swallow its own tail 

Our pain feeds our guilt and our guilt feeds the pain 

Till, in immense pain, many of us slide softly into the earth

Some of us never knowing that we didn’t even really live