**Dear Caffeine,** You are a drug, and just like how two thirds of the population can have the occasional beer and not become an alcoholic, many people can enjoy you in a healthy way, without consequence. But you are not for me. You, Caffeine, are a tiresome vice. A charming one, yes, your bitterness softened by milk, your warmth pretending to be care. But beneath it, there’s the hum, that electrical pulse that tells my body to rise when it should rest. Why would I risk another affair with you when I already know what I have with Sleep? Sleep, who takes me in without judgment, who restores me quietly, who never asks me to run faster than my heart can bear. Sleep brings me what you never could, integration, healing, peace. In the best of times, you shock me awake, and yes, the taste is good. But the shock turns to static, and the static to exhaustion. I miss who I am when I’m not chasing your high. I miss the stillness. I miss myself. I’m writing this on day twelve of travel, twelve days of trying to make my mind work when it won’t, of chasing alertness through airports and train stations, through bars of chocolate and cups of coffee, through sleepless nights and forgotten meals. I haven’t sweated. I haven’t stretched. I’ve been burning, and you’ve been the match. Two or three decades into our affair, I know this breakup won’t be clean. You’ve rewired me. I will crave you when I’m weak, when my eyelids droop mid sentence, when friends offer your familiar scent and call it comfort. But you are not what I need. On you, Caffeine, I am a worse listener. What you promise on day one, you steal from day two. I won’t deny that on day one you give me five more units of energy. But on day two, I need you just to reach my baseline. And on day three, I cannot even reach that. You have made me forget what natural energy feels like. I need to be reminded of the good reasons to avoid you. There are many. They are all the reasons. They are the inverse of every reason why sleep is important. My brain working means that I can be a better friend, a better lover. It means that I can help more animals experience more life. It means that I can be present, that I can care. And I do not need to be anything other than I am. On a day without you, when I get sleepy, I know I need to sleep. On a day after you, when I get sleepy, I hate myself, because it feels like my fault. I do not know if what I need is rest, because you leave me restless. You have become the reason for low key daytime nightmares, where I fail to dance and sing and stare deeply into the eyes of people I love, because I am too tired, too wired. And you do that while stealing from me, nights of deep dreams that kept me ready to live and love ambitiously. Our affair started in a coffee shop, when I was a teenager working night shifts. I was fourteen, pouring nine extra large cappuccinos down my throat to stay awake. Serving stimulants to people who would have been happier asleep, near their loved ones. Selling them what I was already hooked on. You should be ashamed. And how fucked it is, that the world allowed that, that a child was given this drug and told it was normal. You fill my mind until it hums so loudly I can’t collapse into calm. Not on trains, not beside cats, not with friends, not even with music softening the edges. You make my heart skip beats and then demand I run on the offbeats too. And what I need is slowness. What I need is love, the kind of love that asks for patience, for breath, for rest. So this is goodbye. And I will relapse. And relapse is part of recovery. But I know now that a healthy relationship with you is not possible for us. You bring too much noise, too much chase, too much running. When our relationship is done for good, I will not miss you. I will not need you. Please, don’t tempt me. When I want you, I will drink water instead. I will walk. I will breathe. I will remember that love, real love, isn’t found in the buzz, but in the quiet pulse of a rested heart. Goodbye, Em