I once knew a girl…
A girl who potentially smoked more weed than the crew of the Cypress Hill tour bus, a girl who couldn’t face work without ripping a few cones before she left the house. She was one of the sweetest, kindest people I’ve ever had the fortune to meet, a girl almost bubbling over with an energetic sense of vitality and life. Yet she was stoned, a lot. I wonder sometimes how she would’ve coped or what she would’ve done, had the cloud of smoke dissipated, and the fugue lifted.
Weed was a crutch that she needed to get through the day. I’ve dallied in that sort of chemical support with a three week hospital-grade-codeine visit to La La land, three weeks lost to a cotton-wool-padded dreamstate that left me more of a wreck than before I started. At the time, it was what I needed. Afterwards? A lamentable waste of three days, one that showed me a dark side to my psyche, an addictive, avoidant side I’ve since gone to great pains to kill off. Anyhow, so this girl… her mother died. Tragically. In her late forties, in an accident. And still the girl kept smoking, at the same steady pace, affected and yet… unaffected at the same time.
I was horrified.
I’ve known grief. I’ve known death. I’ve felt the razored keening that threatens to shred you from the inside out; as much as those emotions hurt, and as bad as the pain was, I endured it. It changed me. For better or worse, I’m still not sure, only that I’m more resilient, more open-minded, and more emotive as a result. If I had’ve curled in on myself during those dark, dark days, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’d be more naive, more brittle, less able to flex and change, which is a key part of me now.
I bet she still smokes, still withdraws from a world brimming with experiences, good and bad, all of which she’s missing in favour of a burning weed. To each their own eh?
