~ Saudade ~

The attempt to escape from pain is what creates more pain.

— Gabor Maté

There’s a stretch of years I barely remember. After the abuse, before the drugs. A kind of blank space. I went to school. I came home. I existed. But I didn’t feel like I was really part of anything. I didn’t feel real to myself. Just… muted. I wasn’t trying to understand what had happened. I wasn’t even thinking about it, not directly. But it was there, under everything—like a low, constant hum I couldn’t turn off.

I don’t think anyone knew I was carrying something. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t act out in big, obvious ways. I just started to disappear in quieter ones.

Then, when I was thirteen, something shifted.

My cousin had asked me to help him move into a new place. We were in touch more back then, had a decent connection. I don’t know if he knew exactly what I was going through, but he knew enough to know I was curious about weed. After we finished moving boxes and furniture, I stayed the night.

He made a frozen pizza. We turned something on the TV. At some point, he pulled out a pipe and asked if I wanted to try it.

I didn’t hesitate. I said yes.

The first few bowls didn’t do anything. I held the smoke in like I’d seen in movies, waited to feel something, but nothing happened. I figured I wasn’t doing it right.

But after the fourth bowl, something finally hit.

It was subtle at first—a weird sense of heaviness in my limbs, then warmth spreading through my chest, then laughter I couldn’t hold back. I wasn’t even laughing at anything. It just spilled out. My thoughts slowed down. My body felt calm. Sedated. I wasn’t tired exactly, just quiet. Comfortable. I remember trying to talk but not being able to form a full sentence without losing track of it halfway through. And I didn’t care. For the first time in years, I didn’t feel like I had to try.

That night didn’t feel huge. But the next morning, I woke up with this strange calm still in my body. Like I’d finally found something that worked. It didn’t fix anything, but it made everything feel less sharp. Less loud.

I just knew I was going to keep doing it

At first, it was here and there—when I could get it. But slowly, it started to anchor my days. I noticed how irritated I felt when I was sober. How uncomfortable it was to be around people without something in my system. I didn’t want to be social unless I was high. I didn’t want to be in my body.

Weed took the edge off. It softened the feeling of being misaligned with the world. It gave me a version of myself I could tolerate.

A couple years later, my mom made the decision to pull me out of public school. She had started getting involved with a church, and there was a Christian school connected to it that she felt would be a better environment for me. She wanted to protect me, give me structure, maybe even pull me out of whatever current I was starting to get swept up in. I don’t think she knew just how deep that current already was.

She meant well. She always did. She wanted me to be okay. To be safe. To be around people who might be a good influence. But the gap between her intention and my internal world was already too wide.

So I ended up at a private Christian school in eighth grade.

The kids there were different. Polished, polite, full of the kind of warmth that felt almost artificial to me. They came from what looked like good families—stable, happy, present. They talked about Jesus, prayed at the start of the day, volunteered on weekends. They seemed nice, and I don’t think they were being fake. But none of it landed with me. I felt like I had crash-landed in a different world. Their lives looked clean. Mine felt like a mess I had to keep hidden.

I had my own group of friends, mostly outside of school—people who smoked, who didn’t ask too many questions, who liked the version of me I was trying to live into. But at the Christian school, I felt like an outsider. The gap between who I was and who they were felt impossible to cross. I didn’t see any part of myself reflected back in them.

I started to resent them—not individually, but as a group. Not for what they said or did, but for how effortlessly they seemed to belong. For how much they looked like the kind of people who wouldn’t want someone like me around if they knew the truth.

That version of me—the one they could see—stoned, withdrawn, not putting in effort? They didn’t like him either. So it felt like I was being rejected twice: once for who I really was, and again for who I pretended to be.

My bedroom became my sanctuary. I had incense burning almost constantly, psychedelic tapestries on the walls, a small TV with video games, and a stereo that was always playing something loud and angry or spacey and strange. Tool, System of a Down, The Offspring. Music that made me feel like someone out there understood the chaos under my skin. I didn’t always relate to the lyrics, but the emotion in the sound—the tension, the release, the weirdness—it fit.

The song “The Pot” by Tool felt like an anthem for the version of me I was becoming. Not just the sound, but the attitude. The frustration. The feeling of calling something out but not quite knowing who you’re talking to. It gave shape to what I couldn’t yet name.

I used weed with friends when I could, but I didn’t mind being high alone. It wasn’t about the people—it was about the quiet. The relief. It became a rhythm: smoke, zone out, repeat.

At home, things with my mom started to get more strained. She didn’t want me smoking. She worried. Tried to talk to me, redirect me, keep me grounded. But I was already drifting. I don’t think I meant to shut her out. I just didn’t know how to let her in. She still tried. But the tension was always there.

From the time of the trauma until I was 29, I don’t think anyone really saw me. Not fully. People saw versions of me. The smart one. The stoner. The burnout. The kid with potential. The kid wasting it. But not me. Not the part that was still frozen. Still hurting. Still hiding.

Weed helped me keep that part hidden. It let me be just present enough to function—but not enough to feel. Not really.

And that felt like safety, back then.

~ Bleeding ~

For a long time, I believed I was only hurting myself.
That was the lie that made addiction tolerable—maybe even survivable. If I was the only casualty, then it didn’t matter as much. I could disappear quietly, suffer privately, carry the weight alone. That belief gave me permission to spiral without confronting the ripple effects.

But the deeper truth—the one that shattered me when I finally let it in—was this:

I wasn’t the only one bleeding.

My mother was bleeding. My friends. The people who loved me. The community I tried to hide from. I didn’t just numb myself—I distanced myself from others, abandoned them emotionally, hurt them through silence, withdrawal, unpredictability. I thought I was escaping pain. I was multiplying it.

Coming to terms with that nearly broke me. But it also became the doorway to something sacred: accountability, and eventually, transformation.

And now, somehow, I’m walking the same road in reverse.

These days, I’m helping myself not just for me—but so I can become someone capable of showing up in love, stability, and presence. I don’t think that’s selfish. I think it’s the opposite. I think it's holy. Because the best thing I can give to others isn’t a perfect version of me—it’s a whole one. A grounded one. A version of me who knows how to return to stillness, who knows what compassion feels like from the inside out.

Healing myself has become a way of healing my world. And that changes everything.