Welcome back!

Like Part One, this section starts with a little retrospective look at an event in Melanie's past.

PART TWO
The Game That I Lost

One
They fall
Warnings: Drug references

The first time I truly expressed my thoughts to anyone, it was only because of extreme pressure from outside forces.

I hadn't wanted to speak to them. I hadn't even wanted to be in a situation where the mere suggestion of speaking to them would be an option for consideration. All I had really wanted was to carry on, shut myself away from reality and deny that anything needed to change.

I had known that something was wrong. Who wouldn't have? I wasn't that far up shit creek. I knew exactly what I was doing and to what extent it was affecting my life, but that didn't mean I wanted to change. And that was sort of the point. In some ways, it would have been better for me to be in complete denial about the whole thing.

It started with a mistake.

A minor one, really – for most teenagers it would have meant nothing but a short yet uncomfortable conversation followed by a return to their normal ways.

That was what happened with me, too. My mother had sat me down one evening, a serious look in her eyes, and talked. Just talked. I had nodded occasionally and spoken up at the right moments, done everything in my power to convince her of something that wasn't true without voicing the lie, and felt a worrying thrill up my spine as I was doing so. It had worked. That was probably the single most important factor in my downfall. They believed me.

My confidence had made me sloppy.

And my normal ways were a little more risky than the average teenager.

As I approached my seventeenth birthday, the rules began to fade and my daring climbed. Some were thrown out of the window completely. By January I was no longer being selective about location. By February I no longer cared about quantity. Most crucially of all, by March I had discarded my rationality.

On some level, I suppose, I was growing tired with the monotony of the deed. Yes, the euphoria was still there, and yes, I still felt a tingle of satisfaction with every successful secret. But it wasn't enough anymore. It was repetitive. It was easy. It was boring.

My reason was standing between me and the joyous freedom that only occurs during the best of the nods, when your mind is unlocked and any worldly concerns evaporate into the nothingness beyond. That short time when reason disappeared was too fleeting. I wanted to ignore it altogether.

Rule 6 collapsed.

On the twentieth of March, exactly seventeen years after my birth, this ruined me.

It wasn't that dramatic, really – not like how it's always portrayed in films and emotional lullabies. For me at least, there was little theatrics in what happened. Like most days, the cravings had been burning away at my limbs, and like most days, I yielded to them. I gave in to temptation, like I had done so many times before, and collapsed backwards onto my soft bed in bliss as the chemicals swept through my bloodstream. It was routine. It was normal. There were no subtle ideas in my brain that this time would be any different from the rest.

Nancy was the one who found me.

The tiny ten year old, who I was supposed to be caring for in the few hours between school and my parents' return from work, had wanted help with her maths homework. It was probably the thing I felt most guilty about in the following years. The task I had unknowingly assigned to her was far too great for a little kid.

She had dealt so spectacularly well with the problem. Her nerves and reasoning under pressure far surpassed the average ten year old. It was only because of them that I was able to go to university, receive my doctorate, get a decent job, and, all those years later, meet Sherlock Holmes. Without them, I wouldn't have woken up.

It was odd.

I didn't feel that bad about my parents' disappointment or the worry I had caused them. I didn't even feel that bad about forcing them to scrape together their savings in order to get me the help I apparently needed. I certainly didn't feel bad about the risk to my own life. What I did feel bad about were the little things – the stupid details that would usually just be a minor annoyance. My brother had to miss a couple of weeks of university. My mother had to rearrange an important meeting. My sister had to start walking to school as my father wanted to stay with me instead of drive her. They were insignificant consequences of my actions, and yet those were the ones that stuck with me over the years, like losing your favourite lipstick when your handbag is stolen or ripping your pair of tights when you fall over.

Talking was supposedly the first step to healing. Healing. Like I was wounded or something. I hadn't thought of my weakness as a wound or infection. It was stupid and a fault, I knew that, but my soul wasn't sick.

It was just… a little different.

Of course, I didn't tell them everything. While my boredom and frustration with my day-to-day life could be explained as hormonal mood swings, I doubted that the shrink would see my disconnection from everyone as something so simple.

They'd want to analyse me, to shove some label on my brain as if it were a specimen in a jar, and that was an idea I abhorred. I was cut off from the outside world. I sat inside an invisible bubble that let anything physical or factual permeate its membrane, but refused to yield under pressure from more abstract notions like emotional bonds. I liked my friends and family, and I knew that I should love them, but I didn't.

Everything was just there.

I was as honest as I could bring myself to be, and that was a lot more than I had been for at least ten years. I could see that the counsellor recognised this. He was grateful for my effort, if not my attainment, because effort was the most important thing. Changing your ways is of little use unless you're trying to do so.

And I was trying, more so than I would have probably liked to admit.

I didn't think that I needed to stop using, but I wanted to regardless. I wasn't fussed about my personal safety or how I was flushing my future down the drain. All the cliché concerns of an addict – how I had come far too close to death for comfort, how I was intelligent and could have a brilliant career if I applied myself, how I wouldn't let my family down again – they were trivial, but the immediate results of quitting were huge.

It was difficult.

That, although seemingly counter-constructive to my cause, was what helped me overcome the addiction. I wanted to challenge myself. Attempting something new and uncertain was what had dragged me down into the drug-world in the first place; now it was what pulled me out. Although the events of my seventeenth birthday ripped apart my known world and left a scar that would never truly be removed from my family, for me it had only positive outcomes. What had become a monotonous existence was turned on its head. New obstacles and experiences were forced upon me every day. It eradicated my boredom.

My effort was for all the wrong reasons, as the counsellor may have pointed out if I had actually told him the truth, but at least it was there.

It was utterly selfish. While I should have been worrying about my parents and sister, I was revelling in the unknown circumstances. That, too, I knew. But seeing how selfish you're being doesn't stop the thoughts being inside your head. You can wish a reason away, but it'll still be there, gnawing away.

It took a long time, but eventually my parents trusted me to be on my own again.

For a while it was unclear as to whether they would let me go off to university at all, but after many presentations of logical arguments and the stubborn fixing of my acceptance letters to the fridge, they finally agreed under the guarantee that I would continue counselling and visit them as often as possible. They never let me drift out of contact for more than a few days.

But that was fine with me. I could stand all the tedious phone conversations and long train journeys they threw at me, as long as I got some of my independence back. During those dire, exciting months when I was seventeen I had felt smothered. The cravings faded, the reason returned, but that smothering stayed with me. I hadn't appreciated my freedom to the level it deserved before, and now I was sure I would never undervalue it again.

Just as I had expected, when it got easier, the boredom gradually returned. It was too much to hope for that it would have magically disappeared with my cleaning up. It would have been far more shocking if it had, but as it was I just grudgingly recognised its seeping influence on my brain and accepted it as a part of my personality.

I tried to absorb myself in other activities to take the edge off. Schoolwork helped. It was still mind-numbingly easy, but with the arrival of the last couple of months of my A-level year and the following adventure to university, the extra breadth of independence in my choice of leaning topics at least meant I could start researching things myself instead of reading the set chapter in the textbook and repeating it parrot-style. My interest in history deepened. There was so much of it to learn, most of which we never even touched on in school. Ancient history from around the world was particularly curious. The contrast between the violence and beauty of the cultures thrilled me. It was something wholesome, something morally acceptable, something positively nerd-like, and yet studying took over my life.

This was something that could fend off that nagging boredom, and more importantly, it was something I was good at. It allowed me to prove myself, to show others what I was capable of, to receive that goddamn praise I was so apathetic about and yet so desired.

My research was a sign to the world that I wasn't that person anymore. I had crawled out of my drug-hell and become a truly different person.

My work was my second great addiction.

The first chapter of The Game That I Lost should be online later tonight. Look out for it.

I tried to make this like one long train of thought, but now realise that this might make it a little confusing to read. Did you guys find it ok? I know it's also a little bleak in places. Don't worry, I'm not about to go all suicidal and moanie on you.

Haven't asked this for a while now, let's see if I can still manage it…

Review?