Surviving Is not Living

*A note for the book 404: Reality Not Found

As long as I can remember, I was always told that I was nobody.

That I would never achieve anything.

That I was stupid — too stupid to do anything more than simple physical labor. And even that was often commented on, questioned, laughed at.

Those words weren’t shouted. They didn’t have to be.

They were repeated casually, almost carelessly, until they stopped sounding like opinions and started sounding like facts.

I heard it so many times that eventually I began to carry it myself.

I repeated it internally, even when no one else was around.

By nature, I was sensitive and naïve — and I paid for that more times than I can count. Trust came easily to me. Too easily.

I was no saint. My character is weak.

A tendency toward addiction is practically my second name.

Not because I was searching for pleasure — but because I was desperate for relief. For silence. For something that would dull the constant noise inside my head.

I left my home country and went to England, running away from disappointment and sadness after breaking up with someone I loved.

I didn’t leave to find myself. I left to escape myself.

In England, I met another woman. Back then, I thought she was the one.

I believed again — despite everything — because believing felt better than being alone.

I was used and betrayed. And when it ended, it ended completely.

I was left alone — in an empty apartment, stripped of everything that had any value.

Furniture gone. Objects gone. Meaning gone.

What remained was space. Too much space.

The worst part was the silence.

Not drama. Not shouting.

Just the emptiness after everything that once mattered had quietly disappeared.

You can get used to pain. Pain has edges.

But emptiness is shapeless. And emptiness demands anesthesia.

What came next?

Drugs. Alcohol.

Not as rebellion. Not as chaos.

But as a decision that felt strangely practical.

That’s how I discovered amphetamine — a numbing agent that “helps” you feel nothing.

It didn’t make me happy.

It made me functional.

And that was enough.

And that’s how it went for several years.

Now, looking back, I’m surprised I’m still relatively normal and didn’t destroy my health completely.

I used every day.

Not recreationally. Not occasionally.

Every day.

I ate occasionally.

Only when my body demanded it loudly enough to be impossible to ignore.

Sleep practically didn’t exist.

Day after day.

There was no plan.

Only “make it to tomorrow.”

And then tomorrow would quietly turn into today again — identical, blurred, indistinguishable.

England didn’t spare me either.

The illusion of stability faded quickly.

I brushed up against homelessness.

There was a guy I lived with — not very stable. He had done time. About twenty years.

He never said exactly what for, but stealing candy from a corner shop probably wasn’t it.

Living there felt temporary in the worst possible way — like standing on ground that could collapse without warning.

Eventually, it did.

I lost my roof over my head.

Fortunately, I still had a job.

I also had a car, which is where I slept.

I learned how to exist in fragments.

Work. Car. Shower somewhere else.

People around me helped — a shower, a place to store my belongings.

Small kindnesses that kept me alive without ever fixing anything.

Amphetamine was still there.

Every single day.

In doses far exceeding what’s considered lethal.

Did it help?

I don’t know.

Back then, I didn’t think.

Back then, none of it mattered.

Back then, I didn’t give a fuck.

The truth about drugs — and addiction in general — is this:

once you step into it, it stays with you for life.

Even when you stop using, it doesn’t leave.

It waits.

Writing this now, I feel hunger.

Not hunger for food.

A deeper kind.

A hunger I don’t think about on a daily basis.

A hunger that wakes up quietly when I slow down long enough to listen.

A hunger I managed to escape — by placing myself in an environment where I have no access to it and don’t know anyone who does.

And that makes me glad.

I still have a long road ahead before I can feel like “me” again.

Before my thoughts feel fully mine.

Before my body trusts my decisions.

But I think I’m doing well.

Not perfectly. Not heroically.

Just honestly.

And I think I’m on the right path.