Remembering

Missing what I had to let go of

Remembering is a reflection on the kind of relief that once numbed me, but at a cost. It’s about the ache of missing something that hurt me, the complexity of addiction and comfort, and the quiet, ongoing work of choosing a softer kind of survival. This piece lives in the tension between forgetting and remembering, soothing and healing, craving and surrender. It’s for anyone who has ever missed the thing they had to let go of and is learning, slowly, to reach for something gentler instead.

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Remembering

I miss the relief.



The kind that doesn’t last.

The kind that loved me fast

and left me emptier.

Relief that hurt,

but soothed me.



It came in a glass,

with tannins on the nose

and a silence that bloomed behind my eyes.

Or in a binge of comfort,

laced with the discomfort

of fullness pressing against my ribs

like regret.



Sometimes I remember it’s a lie.

Sometimes I forget.

Sometimes I miss the relief.

That fleeting hush,

the illusion of pause,

a moment suspended

where I don’t have to feel

just yet.



Where I can soothe;

not heal, not grow,

just soothe,

spinning softness through my veins,

just enough to blur the edges

of needing anything.



I walked away from so much.

The bottles, the haze.

Clean cuts, sharp separations.

But food stayed woven in me,

threaded through my hunger,

my history,

my home.



Now, there are things that don’t break the rules:

no sugar,

no flour,

no wheat,

few carbs.

Safe, they say. Abstinent.

Holy.



And yet—

they still hush the itch of living,

the low hum of want

just beneath my skin.



I’ve sacrificed so much

in pursuit of peace.

But peace,

it seems,

still holds something back.



It’s about the moment

when I forget

that I’m not hungry,

just lonely,

tired,

frantic for a pause.



I still crave the relief.

The pause.

The silence.



Even now,

with all my healing,

days strung like pearls.



Sometimes I still want to be held

by something that asks nothing of me

but my mouth.



But then I remember:

Relief is not the fridge.

It is the breath.

The tea.

The prayer.

The surrender.

And that kind of relief

doesn’t erase me.

It doesn’t break me.

It doesn’t punish me.

Even if I keep forgetting. 

I’ll keep remembering.