Running in Circles: A Memoir

by Eva Yin

I had wanted to live fast and burn brightly, be a streak of pure delight blazing across the night sky. I had wanted to feel — awe, wonder, wild indescribable beauty — and not a give a shit about the consequences.

I had wanted to surrender myself to the forces of the universe, to experience the highs and the lows of life, the secret mechanisms of the cosmos but instead I found my situation more and more miserable and still I was sitting here, under the weight of my past, feeling the gaping void inside my chest — so big that nothing could ever fill it.

It was a losing battle. I couldn’t win because every time you run away from something, you are admitting that it is more powerful than you — I was running away from pain but all the time it was becoming more powerful, dictating my actions, gaining more control. Thus I had been running faster and faster in circles yet getting nowhere.

Being a heroin addict is like running in circles, you run and you run and you end up exactly where you started. After all that had happened, I had come full circle — I was back to where I started, but this time I knew exactly where I was.