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This story includes descriptions of substances and other themes that could be triggering

Alex only cries when they get stoned. When they’re sober it’s like someone has put a gate on their brainstem and blocked their ability to feel beyond the academic, context-dependent idea of should.

Sticking to once a day is okay, if they do it in the evening after they’ve washed their face. Stealing outside to smoke on the patio, they think about lung cancer with every lighter spark and then sit, head buzzing, and listen to sad songs just to marvel in the way their body responds.

Sometimes they’ll clear a Saturday and take something strong in the morning, spend most of the day glued to the couch or the floor, finding patterns in the plaster on the ceiling. On occasion they’ll take too much and have to lean on something while the room spins and their vision fades to temporary black, and their heart hammers, and sporadically their lungs will force a deep, clean breath that feels like it might be the last they’ll ever get.

Someone’s ripped the memory that keeps reviving into pieces, leaving only scraps of it to surface — the feel of carpet, the brightness of sun, the sound of laughter, the ache of fear in their belly.

It only happens when they’re really high. They smoke, and the smoking builds up a tolerance, and they try to smoke more. When it doesn’t work they take a break, think about smoking and pace their apartment and count the days until they try again.

They lie to their therapist; they lie to themself. They sit on the floor against the couch and stare at their hands or rub their palms on the rug or bite the skin off their lips and convince themself it’s not self harm; they can fix this, and then they won’t need to get high anymore, and they’ll understand why they’re like this, and they won’t feel as broken.

The weed makes their head hurt, the highs don’t last long enough, they’re barely getting high at all. They walk around the neighborhood and play over the fragments of memory until the rumination becomes its own kind of meditation.

One night, so high they’re fighting to stay conscious, they imagine being a robot, imagine someone shifting gears and soldering new wiring. Something gentle washes over them, blooming a thought that leaves them breathless.

Alex tells their therapist about the half-formed memory, who tells them about trauma and the nervous system and gives them some gentle movement homework to do before bed.

Alex does the movement exercises and shivers and smokes and gets into bed. They close their eyes and feel the room spin.

Shards of a memory come through — the color of wallpaper, the sound of the TV in the background. They don’t try to grab at its slippery edges. What would it feel like to let go? their therapist had asked. Tears still drying on their cheeks, they smile into their pillow and whisper: “Powerful.”