Dependency

TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of addiction

Ripples aims to take very serious subject matter like alcohol use to an excessive degree and humanise it.

Too often, it seems that society puts the finger at those struggling as wastes of space, nuisances and so on.
My story is really a human story of how people can fall into negative behavioural loops without another known method of support therefore falling into despair which is only sated by what started the loop.

The throes of addiction are something I haven’t directly experienced but I have been very close to people that have had their own cycles they were, seemingly at a time, imprisoned in.

I definitely felt a deep resonance for what I ended up putting into the work of fiction but I think, for me, the most powerful art is linked to moments of vulnerability.
If you aren’t familiar with me as a writer, I am an autistic performance poet who started as a very shy, undiagnosed boy bullied for his Tourette’s, isolated mindset (but no less beautiful, just misunderstood) and was going through a very difficult time in my family life.
Poetry was what has been there for me since about 11 years old when I put pen to paper and, although I do not wish for anyone to willingly endure hardship to get a ‘good story,’ I know that I would not be the writer I am without those trying times.

This crucial crutch upon which I relied on then is still supporting me now.

I remember exactly when I encountered people battling addiction. I believe I was there on the day of its slow takeover of my partner’s life. I say, believe, because unfortunately I don’t know if what I became aware of was happening before me but I knew the person they were before apparent changes occurred.

Lies. Introversion. Misery.

During Covid, I had some of my worst experiences yet in my life and none of it was in my control.
And Covid happened too.

To summarise a very long and personal story, I had to separate myself eventually from all the circumstances I allude to but writing Ripples allowed me to reconnect with these extremely difficult times in a controlled way,

Okay, it would be wrong to conflate any 1 individual with any 1 way to become entrenched in a life but I ask you, the reader, to consider the human element in the dependency we see.

Debt. Trauma. Grief.

I think that, subconsciously, I was filtering a raw part of myself into Ripples, letting the water of my woes flow out of me and wash over me.
Will you listen to the stories of others before judging them?

Well, that depends…on you.

If you can’t be depended on to help them through the struggle, that’s okay too.
You can’t save everyone just as much as you CAN walk away.
It is not cowardly to choose these options but again, I send my heartfelt condolences to those we’ve lost and hope that we can all begin to see how the Ripples we are so quick to criticise can be made from a profoundly invisible impact we never knew.