Medical Marijuana Gives Me the Chance to Be My True Self Again
I have been a hostage of depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for as long as I’ve known. Memories in my mind are overshadowed by mood, thoughts and emotion, lit with darkness and worry. For decades, I have tried therapies, medications, friends, solitude, home-ownership, pet-ownership, homelessness, behavior management, hospitalization, avoidance, rebellion and the like. All to no avail — until now.
I am a medical marijuana patient (MMJ) patient. I use medical-grade marijuana, prescribed by a physician, to sedate the symptoms of my brain dysfunction. I do not have a “substance-abuse” problem. I am not a drug-user. I am a single-mother, disabled by my condition, unable to work in a field I adore, missing the connection with friends and family I once enjoyed, irritable and quick-tempered.
I have found a new opportunity, a chance to be my true self again, if only for hours at a time. This medicine is helping. Blessed are those who judge me, lest they are ever unfortunate enough to walk my worn and weary path. May they find compassion for those among us who struggle.
I have searched with vigor for peace, quiet, silence and contentment and have finally found it. Unyielding and steadfast, this chemical connection frees me, unshackles the truth, allows me to be without hesitation, without anxiety and fear, without impending doom and terror. Totally protected from self-imposed antipathy, eradicating hate, anger, fear or sadness. Scars on my memory are no longer predators with razor-sharp claws slicing away in fury at my nerve endings, frantic to suckle like leeches ravenous for blood before I forget them.
I can hear them banging and pleading, screaming louder and louder begging for sustenance. Yet, my hearing is slipping and they are terrified of eviction. They don’t know they are etched on me. I hold them close like a homemade, patchwork quilt.
In a mesmerizing fog, they become my Girl Scouts’ patches, a warrior’s pride, my gold medals from the Olympics of a “Recycled Female Childhood.” Cemented mortar between the bricks of experience, my lesions intertwine to build my home of apathy, weighted cynicism and self-deprecating masks of security. Tied to a rope, tied to a concrete slab, freedom is imprisoned by woven fibers of unwanted touch, leaving, inequality, prejudgment, disbelief, promiscuity, deeply recessed guilt and shame, poverty, memory, defeat, innate fear, loss, injustice, grief, rage, rejection and narcissism.
The fog turns to water, one droplet after another, each one filling a pore along the edge of my shell. Skin lures the satin water into it like a magnet invites metal, until I am completely immersed in her relief. She exaggerates her dominance using pressure against me, daring me to swim against her, but cradling me all the while. She revels in making me wait. She is quiet, warm and rippling. She laps her own edges, and her spillover is like a million rainbows in a glass house kind of beautiful.
She welcomes me deeper, her swirling pools melding one into another to create a funnel cloud of intimacy and romantic flotation. I am encapsulated in her embrace. She tosses me along-over and under, upside-wrong, delighted to entertain me. For hours, she holds me close. Delicious rivers of mercury ooze between my ears, while hot overflowing breaths of peace drip from the nape of my neck.
She knows my every need and eagerly meets it so I am tumbling like a bowling ball in space, stirring up nebula and glitter. I can rest in her while she cradles my dreams, lying beside me on shore, exhaling deep and slow into my mouth. As I fall asleep inside her aspirations, I can hear her faint whisper fade and she assures me she is helping.
Image via Thinkstock.
Courtney lives with BPD, c-PTSD, major recurrent depression, anxiety, degenerative disc disease, chronic pain, and chronic caregiver stress & fatigue. She is a woman, fighter, a single mom to children with special needs, a domestic violence survivor, a daughter, friend, girlfriend, ex-wife, doggy mom, writer, patient, wanderer, seeker, a lost girl, a confident badass, a hostage, and a villain. She is both, she is none; she is all, she is some. She has no idea which who is her, but she keeps working-every day, praying for those unpredictably fleeting hours of authenticity. Her bet is you might know how she feels. She writes in hopes to feel understood. She writes in hopes you might feel understood.
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