The problem with addiction is that by the time you’re aware that you are addicted, you are in too deep. You know you should stop but you can’t. I know I should tell Donghae to go, but I don’t. I’m addicted to him. It’s a toxic cycle that constant repeats itself. It’s like that painful film that I watch time and time again, despite the fact that I know it will end badly. Is it because I hope that this time, perhaps, it will end differently? Maybe. Is it because I’ve found myself not simply addicted to him, but to the feeling that comes with it? More likely. Because with every debilitating low, there is a moment of pure ecstasy in between the raging fights and painfully loud silences. There’s the look in his eyes and the feeling of his warm hands upon the junctures of my skin that summarizes my downfall in its entirety.

It starts the same every time, like an old roll of photographs, fading and fragmenting around the edges from overplay. Donghae arrives at an hour inconsiderate of any other visitor. He’s constantly looking over his shoulder as though any moment the illusion of secrecy could be ruined. He arrives in darkness, no headlights and leaves before the sun can rise.

There’s months between each visit and silence is all that connects them. The moment I feel myself recovering, becoming clean, he’s back on my doorstep with his windswept hair and wearing that same old white shirt that has a tear at the bottom of it from when I attempted to pull it from his form in a fit of passion.

“Why are you here Donghae?” It’s like a script, the beginning, middle and end already etched in stone. Each time I ask this, hoping that somehow I can divert us down a path we hadn’t taken before.

“I needed to see you.” His voice is as