Lucky you, still so young and blushingly pretty, you don’t need it yet; you manage without it just fine. And it shows, your opinions, so untainted, bubble unhindered over rosy lips. Eyes bright, a mind untouched, clean as it was the day you took your first breath. With conviction you declare your sobriety, with pride denounce the practice, condemning the acts, steadfast you reject the mere notion.
Around the table smiles get plastered onto faces with eyes weathered by what you so courageously withstand. We, the wary, the patrons of this ancient vice, we have only ourselves to blame. We could still be like you, so naively and blissfully sure about how the world works. Still sure of where we stand and what we stand for.
But alas, we weren’t strong enough; we caved and submitted.
And now it’s forever too late.
There is no such thing as ‘just one’… one word always leads to another.
Page by page it only escalates from there. Soon we needed something stronger, something with more substance, more opinions, more experiences. Book by book we melted away till we were lost. Our minds captured, captivated, filled with words and worlds other that our own.
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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
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