Third Time's A Charm

It took me three tries before it took - the first time I got high.

The way I saw it, those other times didn't count.

Huddled behind snowbanks wrestling dollar store mittens and an old roach.

Leaning against a rusty shipping container on school grounds with the pink pipe plucked from her Visine, lip gloss and Hawaiian-ginger-bodymist-filled-bag.

In the shed after class melting into his shoulder, feeling safe and afraid all at the same time. How?

They didn't count because I would feel more or less the same - outside my body floating in the clouds, but not totally gone. But this time was different; this time, I lost time.

A black void's curtains parted to the world, coming abruptly back into focus - like someone had just splashed cold water on my brain, and I was jolted out of a coma.

I felt like an entity floating in space with no body, or sense of self or time. This was the way I imagined it would feel before you are born - or after you die.

It was the first coherent lapse in my memory, but not the last.

"Am I dead?"

"No"

"Am I dreaming?"

"No"

"Prove it? "

"What?"

"How can you prove to me that I'm not dead or dreaming? You can't! Right? How will I ever know"

A true catch-22.

We're walking in the cold, wet coastal forests, muddy skater shoes and wet bellbottoms slurp up cold water like thirsty plant stems.

That eerie feeling of loneliness and elation you only get when you’re trespassing into the night unsupervised.

He holds my hand, and I feel uncomfortable in my skin again, the feeling of discomfort brings a sense of familiarity at least, maybe I didn't die after all.

Moments in the dark fade in and out, walking noplace, in the wet, taking breaks to sit on old stumps in the woods behind the Dairy Queen. Faces and forms come and go, but I don't know if any of them can see me - because there's a chance I don't exist, after all.

Someone laughs at the joke, and I laugh along, hoping that my acting is convincing that I am a human alive, and not in fact, an alien weirdo, that everyone should secretly hate.

One kid shows up wearing an orange jumpsuit proudly announcing he had just been released from Juvie, I wondered how anyone could have such pride while wearing Velcro shoes. Him and his friends swing golf clubs like bats, talking a big game about smashing in car windows. We never saw it, but I was relieved when they left.

I wonder if my parents have woken up to find the pillows I stuffed in my bed before I snuck out the front door, or if that home I remember even exists at all. Did I make it up? How do I even get there? It seems like some other level of a strange video game that I have to forgot how to play.

We end up in the shed of our friend's house who's Mom is easygoing. She’s single and let us hang out there and smoke and drink and do whatever at all hours of the night. The last time I was there I tried tequila for the first time, and when I saw the worm in the bottom of the bottle, I just about vomited.

We put on The Proclaimers - I'm Gonna Be on repeat. I melt into the familiar smells, sounds and feelings of numbness, the space, the song.

I stay dead there for a little while until I'm escorted back home by him in silence, quietly navigating the discomfort of being a dissociated 14-year-old girl, with butterflies about a boy.

I get home and sneak successfully back into bed, I guess I wasn't dead after all, but it sure felt like it for a second.

That night I learned oblivion exists just on the other side of smoke.