Chapter 8: Hello, I’m Sara. And I’m a compulsive gambler

It’s been 6 hours and 32 minutes since I placed my last bet.

Call it alcohol. Call it the machine. Maybe it was both.

My body couldn’t handle the booze, and the machine won.

I’m not a robot, but for a brief moment, I became one.

Numb. Automatic. Programmed by impulse.

Moving without thinking, like I had handed myself over to something cold and mechanical.

A moment of silence for the compulsive gambler who suffers in silence.

For the one who smiles in public and breaks in private.

For the one fighting urges nobody sees.

For the shame. The noise. The hiding. The war inside their own mind.

Relapse doesn’t always arrive loud.

Sometimes it looks like alcohol.

Sometimes it looks like the machine.

Sometimes it looks like your body giving out while your mind disappears.

I’m not posting this for pity.

I’m posting it because hiding feeds it.

And tomorrow, I fight again.