Venice Flytrap: Fired. Again. Damn.
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A blogumn by Kelly Kaboom
Fired. Again. Damn.
Couldn’t be a worse economy to lose a job then the one we are living in; yet even knowing that I managed to lose my temper with a manager and thereby lose my job. It’s something I’m good at. Hell part of the reason I was named Kelly ka-BOOM in the first place is because of my ability to explode. This particular part of my personality is not something I am proud of, in fact it is something that I work to control. And I was doing pretty good, too. That is until I started hanging out with the boardwalk folks.
You can get anything you want on the boardwalk 24 hours a day. The more people you know, the easier the flow. After a summer there I knew alot of people and those people got to know things about me. For instance if you put something green in front of me, I will smoke it. Mix it with a cool glass of Kentucky bourbon and I’m a barrel of laughs with the right people. With the wrong people, though, I’m a hot mess waiting for a fight. Of course the irony is that the right people are usually the wrong people.
So four weeks ago I got stoned, I got drunk and I got in a fight, with my boss. oops. Three weeks ago I finally said enough! After trying time and again to quit smoking I think that this is it. I went to my church and had a long talk with the Pastors wife, herself a former meth and marijuana addict, who gave me encouragement, prayers and a little rent money. Immediately I stopped hanging out on the boardwalk. When I would head down there inveitably I would run into people with weed. One former “friend” was walking down the street smoking a blunt and went so far as to put it into my hand, I gave it back explaining that I was on my way to yoga and wanted to be able to breathe. I’ve had a few conversations about just stopping with some folks.
“Hey good to see you! Stop by the shop and smoke a bowl.”
“No thanks, I quit.”
“Really? Why?” Look of disbelief and disappointment.
“Had too, it’s been fucking up my life for too long now.”
“But it’s just weed. It’s not that bad.” a little snort mixed with the tone of condisention
“Anything can be ‘that bad’. If you can get addicted to sex you sure as hell can get addicted to weed.” said with patient defiance
See we all have our demons which come at us in forms most favorable. It’s easy to point at crackheads and tweakers and say, “Look that is an addict!” Shit they’re dirty, skinny, toothless and usually talking to themselves. It’s a lot harder to look at a stoner and recognize addiction. Isn’t weed just some funny little high school drug? Just stop smoking, that’s all you have to do, right? Not when it is EVERYWHERE around you and your blood cells cry out for it. The smoke would blow into the restaurant while I worked causing me to think about nothing other than who would be around to smoke me out when I got done.
And yes, my friends, there were other things to go along with it. Remember I said you can get anything on the boardwalk 24/7. So it was a summer in which nights came and went that are more than a little fuzzy, with mornings were my sinuses were a runny mess. But hey, just smoke another joint and those emotions should even out. They SHOULD even out, but never really do. Since I am predisposed to anger and strange behavior it was only a matter of time until I lost all control at work.
Here I am four weeks later and three weeks solid. Such a mixed blessing. While I am happy to be away from negative influences, there are people I genuinely miss. Plus I need a fucking paycheck. But man does it feel good to have stable emotions again. Oh and dreams. Did you know that stoners don’t dream? Nope. Something about the THC taps into that part of the brain and all those weird dreamscapes just stop happening. Thankfully they have come back and I feel a little more normal in the morning. So what if last night I dreamed about being Britany Spears best friend? Even if it was a nightmare at least it happened and more importantly I remember it!
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