April Addiction

         Winter’s lifelessness has reincarnated itself into spring, and I sit torn between love and obsession once again.  Is it a sin to care so much?  Either way, the season has sucked me in like a vacuum, consuming every waking second, and many of the sleeping ones too.  I look into a precipice, a chasm where I can fall and live in a life of ignorant bliss forever.  I can also choose to back away, to accept the world of responsibility, chasing the non-existent American Dream. 

         You see, it is April, and while I smell fresh-cut grass from my apartment window, and listen to frogs croak in the woods and see fireflies dancing to their twilight beat, my mind continuously flutters back to my undoing, an addiction so engraved that it has etched itself into my being.  It has become a part of me, and more than likely, has fully engulfed every ounce of my personality. 

         I can appreciate the 9 to 5, the wife waiting and the children playing.  I can accept the illusion of safety, the mortgage paid, the television anxiously biding time until it can be turned on again.  I have no other question but to ask is this life for me?  Can I walk away and pray that I won’t fall down again?  The answer remains to be seen.

         I never thought at 23 that this would be the essence of me, but this is what it has become.  If I only knew then what I know now, perhaps things would be different.  However, addictions don’t necessarily go away with time, whether they were created in the past or will be in the future.  Is my enslavement the universe’s plan to teach me a lofty principal?  Perhaps an illustrious cleansing will lead to an unraveling of why I became what I am today.

         Then I look down and see my heroes, standing proud with their hands over their hearts, their eyes glistening and uniforms wavering in the gentle April breeze.  This is when I realize that my craving will never run its course.  I finally realize that this is me.  It is not something to fight, or even co-exist with.  I cannot resist, for any attempt would be futile.  There are no words to describe the feeling as we all stand together in unison, our idols racing around the bases toward a goal that we ourselves could never achieve.  Thank God we can still live our fantasies, because that is the definition of an addiction:  to be able to escape the reality of expectations and responsibilities. 

         So yes, it is April once again.  To me, it only means one thing.  It is baseball season, and we all start out on a clean slate.  You tell me, is it just a game?