Lonely Stoner Girl

chapter 1

I've always had self esteem issues. For some reason my automatic mental image of myself is me as a chubby, messy haired 7 year old. My skin is a light brown, and used to have short hair, as nobody liked combing it. I'm often told I used to look like Dora The Explorer. As a child I owned it. Now, as a 16 year old it's a little humiliating. I don't know why but its embarrassing being told I look like a chubby Mexican child.

As a kid I was called a retard alot. My 4th grade teacher told my mother I probably had ADHD. My memory of this time is a little fuzzy, but I remember my mom filling out forms regarding my mental status. I was force fed riddelin for about a year and a half before my mom realized it was screwing with my eating. I was maybe 4'8 and about 68 pounds. I'm not a naturally thin person with bird bones, I was very under weight. My mom had to stop the riddelin and forced to parent me, rather than rely on drugs to keep me calm. Thing about riddelin though is its addictive, and I had to deal with withdrawal symptoms for a long time after that.

When I was twelve I rediscovered drugs. Yeah, I know it's a bit young to be experimenting, but I was lonely. I remember I only had two friends, and they usually ditched me and hung out with each other. they'd known each other longer than me as I had just moved from Williams lake B.C. to lumsden Saskatchewan a month into summer break. My grandmother was sick and my mother wanted to live close because she knew she wouldn't have much longer.

The people in the Prarie were infinitely different than what I was used to. Everyone knew each other and grew up together. I was the odd one out. I first started expirementing with pot and pain killers in small doses. I remember being adamant about only doing it on weekends because I wanted to keep my grades up. It was a time where I still cared about my mother's approval, and I was sure if I could get good enough grades she'd stop calling me a retard.

I didn't understand at the time that my mother is bipolar. I remember it got worse when my grand mother died, a little before I turned 13. Mom used to only call me dipshit or retard when she got frustrated, but at this point the house was a war zone. My step father made sure he was working on the road at that time. Nobody knew how to deal with her.

I got the shittiest end of the stick. My mother didn't like me (I always assumed because I remind her of my deadbeat father who left her alone with a kid at 16) and she would take all her anxiety, stress and depression out on me. She called me fatass and nigger buns, because she knew that I was self conscious of my ass ( that I inherited from my half black father) and that it would hurt me. That year I switched from pain killers to small amounts of morphine.

Grade 8 I remember was an odd year for me. I had my first boyfriend, a guy named Axle, who was dumb as a stump. He was 6'4 and about 260 pounds. I remember I was exactly 5'2 with the leather lace up boots I wore. I was obsessed with him. He told me I was beautiful, smart, everything I'd ever wanted to hear. It didn't last long, as you would naturally expect.

I was heart broken when he'd moved on. I vowed I'd never talk to him again, that I'd never let anything like this happen again. I'd never look stupid over a boy. Halfway through grade 8 I remember I had tried to quit doing drugs, and it was about mid November of grade 9 I started smoking pot again.

Pot had been the best thing that ever happened to me. It calmed my anxieties, made me less self conscious, made all my fears of disappointing my mother dissipate. I decided to stop fighting it and just stick with it. My grades stayed moderately high for a while, but any stoner knows it's either you or your grades. I went from a 94 average in grade 9 to a 73 average in grade 10. I'm smart, and I've never cut a class to blaze. I left grade 10 thinking I had my shit together.

The last month of grade 10, my mother and I had a massive fight. Huge. She tried to put a dent in my face and left me with a black eye. I bruised up her leg and fucked her knee up. She kicked me out of the house and told me that she didn't want to see my face anymore.

I spent 30 minutes collecting only necessities. I grabbed clothes, some books, my bong and toiletries. I called my grandpa crying hysterically, telling him about how I'd just been kicked out, and I had no where to go. He helped me move my things into his truck, and talked with my mother for a minute. His face was stern, which was out of character for him. He always seemed so jovial. At this moment there was murder in his eyes. He had my birth certificate and health card in his hand. He walked up to me, and seeing how scared I looked he softened up a little. "Things happen sometimes. We don't have control over the bad things that happen to us. But we control how we deal with it. You'll get over this."

That brings us to the present. I'm currently lying down on the fouton in my 57 year old grandpa's basement. If he didn't hate strangers so much he could rent it out for quite a bit, especially since it has its own laundry room, kitchen and bath and a door to the back yard separate from the door that connects to the upstairs. It has a dented deadbolt on both sides. I walk to the door in my room. I lock my door and pull out my weed. It's time to self medicate.