I Made It Through a Lonely Evening Sober

Dear Delyara, The loneliest evenings are the hardest ones. Not the chaotic ones. Not the busy ones. The quiet ones. The nights when nothing is happening and all the old reasons for escape begin sounding reasonable again. Tonight was one of those nights. I felt the old pull — not because I wanted the substance, exactly, but because I wanted the distance it used to create between me and my own mind. I stayed anyway. I made tea. I walked around the flat. I breathed badly, then better. I let the craving move through me without building an identity around it. No one saw that. But it mattered.