I shrugged.
“Tell me.”
I ground my teeth, the coin digging into my palm as I clenched my fist.
“I feel stupid,” I whispered.
“Why?”
“Because it’s notreal.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” I unfurled my fist, grazing my thumb over the surface of the coin. “Because it’s not alcohol or drugs. I don’t need a substance, it’s not chemical, it’s all in my head. I’m not sick outwardly, it’s literally all in my fucking head.”
Enoch sighed, pulling his head from mine to reach into a side pocket on his pants and retrieved his phone.
“What?” I asked, trying to read upside down as he opened a Google search.
He motioned for me to wait and I huffed, crossing my arms.
“When you’re not self-harming do you think about doing it?”
I closed my eyes to roll them discreetly before nodded, “Yes.”
“How often?”
“All the fucking time,” I muttered again.
“Have you had to increase the amount of times you self-harm to get the same outcome?”
“Yes,” I mumbled.
“Do you feel anxious, irritable, stressed or depressed when you try to stop self-harming?”
“Yes.”
“Do you spend time trying to hide your behavior from family or friends?”
“Yes.”
He lowered the phone, leveling me with a look that saw straight into my soul.
“Then, I hate to break it to you, but you have a veryrealbehavioral addiction to self-harming. You’ve rewired the pathways in your brain that regulate dopamine to get a high when you self-harm. You crave it, just like any addict craves their vice be it substances, gambling, sex, or self-harm. And the compulsion to continue doing it is so strong that it feels impossible to stop, despite however hard you believe you want to stop. You experience emotional withdrawal symptoms, just like every other addict, even like I did, because withdrawal isn’t just physical. It might be all in your head, but it doesn’t mean it’s notreal.”
He tilted his phone to show me the article he was reading from.
“You can Google it yourself, but it’s a recognized problem, one that you unfortunately were genetically predisposed to withtwo addict parents. And it’s real. Requires real treatment, real support, and real empathy.”
I groaned under my breath, scrolling through the medical webpage.
“So, I’m an addict.”
“Yep,” he said nonchalantly.
I growled, dropping my head to his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around my back.
Fuck.
