Addiction comes in many forms...

At what point does attraction cross the line into obsession? Is there a clearly defined line between normal attraction and dangerous addiction? I ask only because these seem to be the paramount questions I’m facing and I’m wondering if anyone else has taken the time to really consider it. I spent so much fighting for something I couldn’t have and at the time I sincerely had diluted myself into believing that the more I suffered the more it meant that I was genuinely in love with her. I know I was a sick man.

But hindsight lends perspective and I see now that more than anything I was chasing ghosts, running after something I never had and never would. But what about when you have it, when you hold it in your hands, when you can actually look into her eyes and see the emotion behind them and there no extenuating circumstances keeping you from each other aside from your own fear and trepidation? If you keep chasing that dream, is it still just as foolish?

I know I’m asking a lot of questions and not really saying much in the way of commentary or hypothesis but I feel it necessary to posit the queries early as a means of letting the answers develop naturally. The mainstay of this piece is kind of a part II to the previous one. At what point do you just give up on something? When does the potential pay off exceed the amount of investment needed?

There is a kind of sick comfort that exists in accepting that you’re miserable and that there’s little to be done to change it. The embodying of a blind acceptance for something so abhorrent that your better nature takes a back seat and you become something else, a self made victim. We all do it, we run away from the things we don’t want to face down, we hide from the feelings we don’t want to acknowledge, and we sit idly by and wait for the difficult situations in life to blow over. There are those of us that rise to the challenge and confront it head on, but the number is growing smaller and smaller.

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, well in case you didn’t notice, I have a problem. I have a proclivity to getting involved with women that are never completely available to me. I won’t go down the entire list, but in naming the most recent forays we’ve got two wonderful examples. As everyone well knows, Nicole was engaged when we met then got married and still we continued seeing each other. The end of the story is of course that she moved and left me holding the fractured pieces of my broken heart. The next vixen that I cast my attention on, told me very plainly as we lay naked holding each other that she was not over her ex. She claimed that she still had feelings for him, but it was nothing to worry about. The klaxons in my head sounded off like an air raid warning. My instincts told me to be wary and with good reason, but I digress.

Back to the admission portion of the piece, I have an addiction to being involved with women I can’t have almost as a built in way for me to be denied happiness and thus continue having the fuel to feed this fire. I avoid happiness like the plague, never really wanting to indulge too far for fear of losing the edge that misery gives me. I grew up in a near constant state of chaos and the result is that, as much as some would like to discredit this claim as just my aspirations to identify with Heath Ledger’s Joker, I am a creature of chaos. The only way I know how to be truly contented is when I’m mired in strife. I am the world’s most perfect example of a wistfully functioning malcontent. I seek out happiness just like everyone else, but I seek it in places and from people that can realistically only engender more discomfort.

While most would take the above admission to either be an emo statement or the ramblings of a very psychologically diluted and thus mentally sick man, I assure you it’s merely my assertion. I recognize the contradiction in the assertion and believe me I see the incredulity, but let’s be honest, no one who has any insight into the dealings discussed above can really say I’m wrong. I’m still chasing ghosts, still pining away hoping for some change, some reality shift that causes the heavens to rupture, the earth to split wide and for the woman of my dreams to come springing forth from the nexus of oblivion and take me into her bed and provide me with an endless supply of love and affection. And then the dream stops, the reality sinks in, and I’m made to face the fact that Nicole isn’t coming back, and the as yet unnamed vixen that so recently stole my heart does not and cannot reciprocate and I am the victim of my own delusions.

This is veering dangerously close to being something I don’t want it to be. Let’s take a breath here and give a moment to collect my thoughts…

Okay that’s better. So my addiction is that I cling to women I can’t have because of this misplaced ideal of love that I ascribe to the truly remarkable specimens and because so many others toss the term around the gravity of my admission is lost on deaf ears. Sucks to be me, but I digress. The truth is that while I may fall hard for a very select few, there are those that seek all the attention they can find and they do anything and everything they can to cultivate that. Random pictures, indecipherable texts, muddled status updates, clandestine dealings, anything to generate interest and grab the attention.

Attention whoring, as we’ll call it, is done by many in a myriad of ways but ultimately it all serves the same goal, getting the attention of the people around you. But what causes it? Is it the same addiction that I mentioned above? There are people in this world so deprived of the attention they think they need that they’re willing to endure hellish and abhorrent behaviors and treatment just to sate their own lack of self esteem. They endeavor for nothing more than recognition in any regard. Whether it’s someone blaming them for ruining their life or someone doting upon them with all the love and adoration in the world they will never be satisfied. Addiction fills a void, it’s satisfies a need, either created or engrained, but it serves a purpose. Attention whoring is an addiction.

What makes our self esteem break down to the point where we have to seek out validation of our existence in someone else? The unhealthy defining of our lives by how others perceive us seems to be a driving force in the way business is conducted. Always seeking to please others is a fault that is personified in a massive number of people. Now don’t get me wrong I know that to some extent we are all playing parts, we’re all naturally conditioned to want to be liked. We’re social creatures! But when it begins to make you lose sight of yourself or reevaluate facets of yourself that were once above analysis, you might be trying too hard to fill that hole.

Nobody enjoys being disliked. That’s a given. Hitler is seen as the embodiment of all evil in the twentieth century but I’m sure as reviled as he still is, were he still alive his ultimate goal is just to be liked. Call it peer pressure, extenuating circumstances, weak wills, people pleasing, or just a plain lack of self identity but it all comes down to the same thing, we have a need to be liked and an addiction to notoriety so we do almost anything to get that. A girl who sleeps with a guy because she wants him to like her, or a girl who refuses to really leave her ex for fear of having no one around, or a guy that does insane things just to get noticed, or a guy that behaves completely inappropriately to garner laughter and recognition are all examples of people doing things that compromise facets of self to earn social acceptance. I show up to parties in a myriad of costumes, not because I have nothing else to wear but because I know it will get me noticed. Recognition is what it’s all about.

The girl who beds down the random guy is earning the attention she wants from him, and getting noticed by the other women who want him as well as her friends for being so bold. So she spreads her legs, moans and whimpers, screams and yells and all to make him like her. She puts on a show to gain acceptance, to gain recognition, and most disturbingly, to get a warped form of respect.

The girl that can’t leave her boyfriend is afraid of being alone and losing the respect she believes she’s garnered. In most cases the boyfriend is either a selfish ass that cares more about himself or his friends than the relationship or he’s an overly sensitive pansy that lacks any kind of conviction or will of his own to function independently. I was the latter guy for about two months during my tenure with Nicole. But ultimately, she stays so that she won’t be alone and so that when or if she breaks his heart she won’t be the one cast in a negative light. It’s the old thing of whomever calls it quits on the relationship the one in the wrong is or the one with the guilty conscience. So she sits, suffers in silence and hopes that he’ll get bored and leave or a massive fight will break out and she’ll have just cause to have left.

The guy that behaves inappropriately is really just an act to get attention. Pissing in the sink, calling girls unkind names, baring his ass, yelling at cops, screaming obscenities, or just making people feel uncomfortable are all methods of getting noticed. And recognition feeds the addiction. Then you have the flip side of things, someone that does perfectly legal things but to such an extreme that you marvel at them. He drinks until his liver is screaming at him to stop, just so he can say he out drank someone else, or does obscene amounts of drugs simply for the bragging rights, or he picks a fight with a random stranger for no reason simply to be the center of attention for however long the fight lasts.

Now these are a bit extreme but the concept stands firm. We all do things that are sheer lunacy and we do them for no other reason than the attention that is generates. There is such a thing as addiction to attention and some people will do anything to get it. Perhaps in the end though, love in its purest form is just a diluted form of addiction.