The sun had long since set as I pulled up to my driveway, to a building that nursed my childhood but now contained a better part of vacancy, most rooms not having had seen life for months on end. Over the past couple years, days had become a routine from my bedroom to the kitchen to the bathroom and back again. I desperately needed a shower from work, but I could not get myself to open the garage to make the well known trek through cold halls.
Instead, I sat there, parked over the names and silly designs my sister and I pressed with giddy fingers into wet cement all those years ago, over the paint stains from crafts we made, too excited and carefree to find the time to put a tarp down. I let silence envelope me for one, two, three slow heartbeats as my foot pressed on the brake and my hand shifted the car to reverse. I watched the reflection of my headlights get softer against the garage as I inched back, the darkness of the night greedy for its glow.
When my front tires rolled off the driveway that framed my youth, I felt a new oxygen fill the car. As I pressed the acceleration to merge onto the highway, I could finally find a breath. With each new city exit I soared by, my body relaxed further into my seat.
Everyone has a drug of choice. It’s the bottom of a glass bottle. It’s the smoke that fills hazy lungs. It’s the colorful mix of pills that are placed on the tips of eager tongues.
Me? I found my high at 16.
Key in the ignition. Music cranked up to decibels louder than your wildest house party. Windows cracked down just enough to feel the wind bite into my face but not enough to tangle my hair.
It was absolute freedom.
I drove mindlessly and for hours, looping around the city but most times just going straight — straight down a different highway each time and for as long as I could stand before reality hit that I would have to spend the same amount of time driving back as I did there, wherever there was.
Driving back was never as fun.
Driving back felt like a mourning.
revenge bedtime procrastination a phenomenon in which people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during the daytime hours
I got high often. Most times at night.
It was fun, a rush that got my body buzzed — I felt good, real good. I felt lifted. I flew.
It was beautiful.
As a kid, I was scared of the dark, and that’s describing it mildly. I was terrified. My heart would beat fast, then faster again, and my body would lock up. My imagination was too large, and in the dark, space felt never ending. Time felt infinite.
My highs were something different, though. There was an awe to being cast under shadows. Everything laid even on one playing field. Movements weren’t rushed or chaotic. Nothing felt so harsh anymore. Life just was.
I could simply exist, in the there and the then. Nobody paid anybody and nothing paid anything any attention.
Getting high became my favorite thing to do.
Yet, like all once-good things, I soon began to hate it.
The relief became a need, or perhaps it always was one, and I hated relying on anything. I hated needing another hit, but I did.
One for the frustrations of screaming conversations between figures who were supposed to be my protectors.
Another for the pressure to live up to elevated expectations with achievements that became more of an embarrassment than a celebration.
A third for the sorrow of unwelcome touches on skin that bred angst and shattered confidence.
A forth for the humiliation of excuse after excuse made for confidants who should have done more, been better but didn’t, weren’t.
A fifth for the settling, for the unsolicited input from others who made it feel so wrong to feel anything bad.
My highs became a reminder of lost things, but I still craved the temporary freedom anyway.
always the last to leave the party
drugs rule everything around me
wake up with new tattoos on my body
drugs rule everything around me
hit the Goose, raise a toast, pop the molly
“D.R.E.A.M.” by Miley Cyrus
It was unlivable, this addiction of mine.
When getting high is the only way to feel alive, when you spend your days, hours, minutes counting down until your next hit, you start to go mad, and I was going mad. You want it to stop, and I wanted it to stop. You just do not know how to do it, and I didn’t.
It was a long process, but recently, I have been forcing a sort of withdrawal.
In my highs, I have slowly stopped taking note of the city signs and miles that take me farther and further away. I have found a new love for the shadows, not because they mask cruelty but because they make the light that much brighter. The skyline and stars that illuminate the world after the sun sets? They are mesmerizing.
Sometimes I get angry, and sometimes I am upset. Sometimes I let myself think about the frustrations and the pressure and the sorrow and the humiliation and the settling.
But most times, I sing along to music that is loud but much sweeter than any house party. I roll my windows all the way down so my hand can glide in waves through the wind. I laugh as my hair becomes a tangled mess in front and behind and to the sides of my face, and it is a new kind of beautiful, to be present without any expectations or worries.
When it is time to turn around and drive back, it feels pure.
Driving back feels like going home.
brittany given. 