Addicted to Love ❤️

Faint whispers caress my ears as family and doctors scramble to determine my fate.

“Should we have her committed?” “That’s my daughter you’re talking about!” “Ma’am, she’s been here three times. Next time she’ll kill herself and you won’t get her back.” “Therapy. What about therapy?” “She’s been in therapy for over a year yet she’s still in a damn hospital bed!”

I know I’m getting out of here. I always do. As soon as my common sense returns to me, I’ll be back frolicking in a field of roses with my heart on my blood-stained, right sleeve. On my left arm, the band-aid from my freshly removed IV. I never give myself time to properly heal, but why wait? Hand me my bra so I can gather my breasts from my sides, and pass me my rose-colored glasses. I’ll keep the hospital gown for my dramatic exit.

Hi, I’m Whitney, and I’m not suicidal. I’m addicted to love.

I’m addicted to the high the mirage of romance offers. I’m addicted to the sweet mist, the soft kiss, the sheer bliss of affection.

And no matter how many times I die on the inside, I’m brought back to life realizing that love and death are synonymous.

I met Garrett when I was 22. I was fresh out of college and looking for more than a spring break rendezvous. He did a double-take when he saw me as I pretended not to notice. He approached me gently and uttered the words, “You’re a very pretty lady.” In hindsight, that was the most basic thing for him to say. He was far from Shakespeare. Far from James Baldwin. Hell, not even touching Sesame Street. But to be fair, I was accustomed to guys confessing their love for me just before chunky vomit splattered across my shoes. Those words were a romance novel to my ears, and I walked away not smelling like stomach acid. Bonus points.

Months went by and I knew for sure he was the man for me. He was the man God sketched out right beside me as He prepared the blueprint for my life. We talked about a future together. We spent many nights laughing and filling our bellies with pizza and beer. Our embraces seemed to never end. I still remember the way his beard glistened under the lamplight. I still hear the shuffling of his feet on the floor. I loved every detail. I used to lie in his arms as he lied to my face.

As no children evolved into two.
As three years my senior grew to ten.
As single morphed into taken.

To find out that the man I was building a life with had a full-blown relationship with another woman made me sick. To uncover these heinous lies so randomly made my stomach turn. And there it was. The vomit that didn’t appear when we first met began rumbling in my stomach like a dormant volcano preparing for its debut. Hawaiian waterfalls plunged down my cheeks and my heart fluttered like a thousand moths.

Early that morning, before I could see another sunrise, before I could lift my eyes to the heavens and plead for help, there on my closet floor alone and broken…

I died.

When I emerged from the grave of hopelessness, wrath, and defeat, I found myself on a stark white hospital bed badly bruised, but alive. I scanned the room from the right to the left. My eyes stopped on the window as the sun glanced in and smiled. I took a deep breath and thought to myself, “I have another chance to love.”

The nurse walked in as bubbly as a freshly opened Coca-Cola, but gentle all the same. “How are you feeling? You took some pretty serious blows!”

I looked at her and smirked, “I’m much better now. I think it’s time for me to go.”

“Oh no!” She rebutted, “You have to be under surveillance for at least another few weeks. You’re just not ready. Here, I’m going to take your vitals and your breakfast will be up shortly.”

Little did she know I would be on the next train to love land before the scrambled eggs hit the plate. With my oversized, yellow hospital socks on my feet and my milk chocolate cheeks peeking through the back of my hospital gown, I headed through the double doors.

And then I met Micah.

I wasn’t attracted to Micah. I originally had no interest in dating him at all. However, his sob story mixed my Southern hospitality and topped with my need to ”fix” people made for a killer cocktail. It wasn’t long at all before I was Beyoncé singing Drunk in Love and parading a baby bump on the karaoke stage of my life.

What have I done?

It was in this relationship where I realized that it was possible for two people to spend all their time together and not know each other at all. I was having a baby with a man I didn’t know. As time went on (the time I should’ve spent guarding my Crown Jewels), he became abusive. Without laying a finger on me, he beat me half to death. I later did the other half on my own. Full of stress and misery every other day, I managed to deliver a healthy baby boy.

The abuse worsened to an intolerable level. No matter how hard I tried to love him for the sake of our family, he found a way to make me feel microscopic. Invisible even.

Most mornings I was confined to the mattress prison that I loved so much. Many mornings the sun showcased its brilliance outside, but my room remained a bleak, gray asylum. My heart was pleading with my lifeless body to get up, but my mind, paralyzed by depression and angst, couldn’t instruct my limbs to budge.

That is until the eerily illuminated, orange pill bottle caught my eye. Instantly, I went from addicted to love to addicted to narcotics. I didn’t want to feel the pain.

The pain from him.
The pain from my own horrible decisions.
The pain of watching my life spiral into a black hole like a toilet full of feces.

When the high wore off and my world stopped spinning, nothing changed. Not a thing.

Like a rabid animal backed into a corner, I felt fighting was my only way out. I became violent. I went from watching episodes of Snapped to being featured on Snapped figuratively speaking.

We got into an argument one morning. A few verbal jabs led to a few physical ones and I instantly became a bull charging towards a red flag. This was the day I was going to pay him back for all the terrible things he put me through. I was going to show him how much pain I felt. I was going to withdraw every penny of wrath I’d deposited deep into my soul. I went to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest butcher knife I could find and headed to his funeral…….

*KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK* “SHERIFF!”

I sat at the kitchen table calmly. As the two Sheriff’s approached me, tears began to build up in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I was conflicted. I knew I was wrong for what I did, but how do I explain the reason? How do I tell two strangers who care only about the law that I was pushed to near insanity? How do I explain years of innocence when one moment of guilt outweighed it all?

II didn’t kill him. I didn’t stab him at all. I did grab a weapon, though, and that alone nearly sent me to jail.

“You know, if we have to take someone into custody, it won’t be him. It’ll be you,”

My heart pumped at record speed before I had a full-blown panic attack and…

I died.

The hypnotic beats of the heart monitor sounded in the dark as I passively attempted to open my eyes. There I was again in the place that started to become more familiar than home. Extremely frustrated and rather bored with being in the same situation again, I sat up and let out a hopeless breath. As I sat alone in the room with a few half-hearted, “I told you so,” get well soon cards, I realized that I was the problem. No way I could fail that miserably in love TWICE. Back to back. No way. So, I pulled up my oversized, white granny panties that came from I don’t know where, and snuck out of the hospital again. Only this time, I was headed to a different arena of love. I was headed to rehab.

I was in therapy for about a year before life seemed to hit a U-turn. I unpacked a U-Haul full of baggage I carried around in my mind for decades. I learned that I lacked boundaries, barely recovered from childhood traumas, and a laundry list of other items that made me unwell. It was also comforting to know that I was not responsible for the wrongs that were done to me. However, I was taught to make better decisions in regards to who entered my space and what I allowed in my life. It seemed like I could conquer the world. I felt strong, courageous, beautiful, worthy, and new. The unhealthy groaning for men stopped and was substituted by the desire for a healthy relationship…in due time. I was content.

And then I met Jamal.

I laughed a laugh of disbelief. NATURALLY, as I was finally recovering from years of relational land mines, the man I was secretly eyeing for a couple of years showed up unannounced and oh so fine. This one felt real. Although I was much more careful and practically running EVERY detail by my therapist, I couldn’t have predicted the following events.

We were sweet and sour chicken; a perfect balance of similarities and differences. He was transparent with me as I was him. We both had pretty ugly pasts but desired to grow rather than be stuck there in the mud. I said to myself, “Finally!” But, before the “Y” fully escaped my lips, things changed. I didn’t know why.

He grew cold. Distant. Cruel even. Seemingly out of nowhere. Then, like a schizophrenic chihuahua, he turned around and showed affection. This swivel door revolved for months before I drew a very important conclusion.

He didn’t know how to love.

I knew he wanted to love. I believed the love he had for me was real in emotion but it was absent in execution. He short-circuited every time he approached vulnerability and automatically reverted to his rigid default. I ran out of energy on that merry-go-round. So, the vein that connected my heart to his had to be severed. Once it was…

I died.

Faint whispers caress my ears as family and doctors scramble to determine my fate.

“Should we have her committed?” “That’s my daughter you’re talking about!”“Ma’am, she’s been here three times. Next time, she’ll kill herself, and you won’t get her back.” “Therapy. What about therapy?” “She’s been in therapy for over a year, yet she’s still in a damn hospital bed!”

I know I’m getting out of here. I always do.

With every death, there’s a possibility to be born again. Another opportunity to love.

Until next time…

Cheers.