Every so often I sit back and wonder what happened to me over the years. I see what use to be and how I use to feel and wonder, have I been that damaged that I don’t even really recognize myself today. The thing about pain and being hurt is that is strips away the naïve part of the mind that you live within. It hardens you to life and it can sap you of the natural highs that you use to feel often. You know I can remember when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I use to never need to smoke weed to feel that sensation of being high. I didn’t need to drink too much or smoke numerous blunts to be lifted to a place that felt beyond Earth. All I really had to do was wake up, and let the music play and my mind and heart were so filled with happiness that I just had natural highs that were epic. I remember one day I was just really feeing myself. I was feeling good and I had no real way to explain the feeling. I couldn’t really tell you why, other than I felt great. Even though I was dealing with a few challenges, it was nothing that I felt I couldn’t deal with, and consequently, I wasn’t bothered. That Saturday morning I got up, washed my face, brushed my teeth, turned on my music, opened my blinds and let the beautiful light from the sun come into my apartment. I smiled when I looked into the mirror and I just knew the day was going to be great.

Earth Wind and Fire was blaring through the speakers and I was jamming. I called my mom laughed with her a little bit, called my best friend and we talked for a couple hours too. Then I went about the day without a care in the world. I washed my car so she would feel as good and clean as I did, then came home and made some lunch. I called my other best friend and laughed at him for a bit and then just enjoyed the day. I remembered talking to some guy on the phone and he asked me was I high. LMAO. I guess because my voice was very much so full of life and I couldn’t stop laughing at him and making jokes. I told him at that time that I didn’t smoke, I was just truly high off life. I felt great, things were working in my favor and I just had so much joy and energy inside me that I feel like I’m floating. I remember him telling me to hold on to that feeling for as long as I can. He said that he had those moments too and when they happened he just tried to keep it going until it left him. Not rushing it away or trying to bring people into his environment who could potentially spoil his high.

That’s been so many years ago that I wonder if I even know what it’s like to have a natural high anymore. I sued to sometimes feel a spiritual high during and after church service, but they never really seemed to last too long. Usually within an hour or two of being out of service that feeling leaves and it’s back to whatever normal feelings that I have that day. I miss those feelings though too. At least knowing that those endorphins were kicking in to make me feel like the world is beneath me and I’m floating on air was amazing. Now, I can’t tell you what that feels like anymore. It’s been soo long since I’ve had that feeling that it just feels like I’m not even connected to my natural feelings anymore. At least not the ones that make me feel really good anyway. Those feelings are the shortest lived feelings ever right now in my life. I can feel good and be in good spirits and then just like a puff of wind, it’s gone. Replaced by the pain or sadness or depression that often roams through my head and heart. It’s like I’ve been robbed of the ability to naturally feel good about myself, the only thing that gets me there is a blunt.

I can remember me saying that I never wanted to be that type of person. I never wanted to have life hit me in such a way that I needed to turn to weed just to make myself feel good for any prolonged period of time. I always said that I would remember who I am and just how much the spirit of life was in me and that would always be with me through the trials of life. I thought that I had solid foundational understanding of how to keep in touch with that part of my heart and spirit. Now here we are today and I can tell you that I don’t who that man is anymore. Seriously, I don’t even know who I am anymore. There was a time when having a lot of sex to me was a turn off. It was an afterthought because I always wanted to be settled and married to just one guy. Letting him have all of me and me having all of him. Always willing to be experimental with him so that we never lost the spice in bed. Never going soo far as to just get too loose with it and being the whore that I’ve become. I look at myself and I ask myself who have I become? Why do I hate myself so much that I’m willing to let myself be used for sex so much? Notice I didn’t say just my ass or dick, because I use them both.

It is one of the hardest and disappointing things that I’ve come to realize about myself. My ability to create and release that natural high seems to be long gone. A thing of the past that doesn’t seem to be returning anytime soon. I’ve tried for the past couple days not to smoke weed to see if I can create that feeling of being high on my own, and it really hasn’t worked out so well. The laughs still come, the jokes are still right there at the top of my head, but the fun isn’t really there. After I say my few jokes, I recede back into my own world. Not wanting to be bothered or talked to very much. More interested in the show that’s playing on the tv on my phone, than listening to what anyone has to say. Knowing that if I was high, I would be all engaged and just laughing it up, but I’m not and I don’t really want to be bothered. I really wonder if I’ve lost all sense of who I am. I wonder if I have lost all ability to love life for what it is, no matter the struggles that come my way. I watch my friends and shit living and enjoying life, while me I sit and just seem to stay stuck. Unable to let go and just enjoy the moments in life. I’m alone and depressed. All people want to do is lie and make themselves feel good by getting in my energy, taking my energy and then going on about their way. Not wanting to really expend the energy to know me, just feeding their fuel cells with my premium energy.

I guess I’ve been too damaged and too scared to really appreciate life for now. Maybe something will puncture this bubble and I will be able to breathe again. Find the air that lets natural highs reign supreme and removes the need to hit them trees. I try every day to find that person that use to exist. Not to return to the old, but bring part of the old into the new. Mold that sweet, exuberant energy with the wise maturity of today. A hybrid that is dynamic and unstoppable. I pray I find that man before it’s too late. God I miss seeing me, the true and pure form of me. A natural high is the best feeling ever and one day that high will find me again.