Ryan Hampton
The bowling ball on my chest is always heaviest at 3 a.m. Its steady pressure pushes me out of sleep most mornings before the sun rises on either coast. I could set my alarm by it, but I don’t need to. Wherever I wake up—in hotel rooms, at friends’ houses, or in the home I share with my husband—the bowling ball is there, in the pocket right between my ribs and a little bit north of my stomach.
When the weight wakes me up in the morning, it’s never for a good reason. Every day, I talk to friends, parents, loved ones, and peer workers as they face yet another unspeakable tragedy. One in ten Americans has lost someone to an overdose, and that number is only rising.
An entire generation is dying off, as though killed by a plague that nobody is brave enough to name.
There are no words for these losses—these deaths. What I felt in the beginning—the hot anger and outrage that fueled my advocacy, pushing for bipartisan legislative solutions and distributing lifesaving naloxone—has faded to a dull ache that sits in my body and never goes away.
It feels like grief. Or maybe, heartbreak.
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