Writing not smoking

I’d be lying if I said I’m not depressed.

Being back in my hometown feels like walking through a museum of my old selves. Every couch I crashed on, every fridge I raided at 2a.m, every person who ever loved me back is still here – smiling at me, but with that quiet fear behind their eyes. I can feel it. I’m afraid for me too.

Some nights I draft a final letter to my son’s father – wishing him peace, apologising for the mess we created in addiction. Other days I pace the city looking for a version of myself that hasn’t quite come home yet.

At this stage, it’s hard to tell what’s actually my personality – mentally naked and sober for the first time since I was eight years old. What’s the hormonal shift toward protective mother? What’s the withdrawal, the abstinence, the rewiring?

And if it is all just abstinence exacerbated by hormonal shifts, when can I expect to feel stable? Whatever “stable” truly is?

So I’ve started going to therapy today with a real clinical psychologist, no more counsellors. An entire hour of unpacking childhood trauma, toxic relationships, the breakdown, the pregnancy.

She didn’t blink when I told her the truth.

She’s pregnant too. She said she wanted to work with me. That alone felt like a tiny piece of repair.

I’m almost 17 weeks along today. The blinders are up, I’m not aborting nor putting my baby boy up for adoption.

He is growing facial features this week. A whole little face I haven’t met yet. He’s been keeping me alive since he was just a blue cross on a plastic stick. And so am I.

As much as I wallow and strife to peel out of the sheets every waking morning, battling feelings of grief and woe and total depersonalisation – my growing son is the spark I need to move forward.

I have a plan for study and work. A roof over my head. A family willing to support me. That’s not nothing – even if then and now still feel miles apart.

Maybe this isn’t depression; maybe it’s repair mode, the messy in-between where you can’t tell what’s healing and what’s hurting.

That strange territory where past, present and future collapse into a pile of scattered wires.

Where you can’t tell what’s grief and what’s growth.

Where nothing feels stable because everything inside you is being rewired at once.

I’m yet to land in total acceptance of who I am and what I’ve done over the many years of active addiction.

I don’t crave weed anymore. I just crave relief. And the only way out of this pain is through it.

That’s all I have today. Not clarity. Not perfection. Just hope.