Man of the Hour

1

Much to my chagrin, I woke up to the muffled sounds of drums and guitar above my head. My eyes shot awake and I immediately pressed my royal blue pillows to my ears. No, not now. Not right goddamn now. I was in the middle of something important, something that needed to be tended to. The backbeats of my neighbor's tunes was tremoring within the confines of my bedroom walls, and in my head I prayed for him to stop, but as the music intensified through the thin ceiling and drywall, I had no choice but to get out of bed.

If I could, I would give the guy living above me a livid piece of my mind. Normally, I'm rather outspoken as a person, so usually I would let him have it, all of it, all of the reasons why the shitty caterwauling he passes off as music at 8 in the morning isn't acceptable. I wish I could hammer onto him how much of a difference it would make if he could just quiet down for just two seconds. It would have been nasty. It would count as one of the top 10 most bitchy things I've done in recent memory. Most of all, it would have been epic. I've been waiting for a guy like him to just unload everything that I've been wanting to say. In another time and place, I would have knocked this guy down a peg and I would have relished in his downfall. The thing is, I couldn't. The guy above me was just trying to drown out his own crying. He had just lost his wife and kids two days ago. No one knows why.

When I first visited my upstairs neighbor and asked him to quiet down yesterday morning, he suddenly broke down on my shoulder and jabbered on about the love of his life and his two biggest joys suddenly disappearing without any warning. He claimed that the police didn't believe his stories of a secret, shadowy organization taking his family away from him. It definitely doesn't seem like they tried to flee or escape the household. All of their clothes and belongings, their material possessions, they were all still there. They just simply vanished, as if out of thin air.

Ever since that day, I've tried to avoid him, but he's been getting harder and harder to ignore. He told me, once his emotional outburst subsided, that it was rock music that helped him connect with his loved ones. They would blast it during their road trips, or on their family vacations. In fact, it was The Neighborhood that accompanied my neighbor alongside a marriage proposal for his wife. He tells me that story with a shaky tone to his voice.

So of course I couldn't refuse him to play. But just as well, was it such a ridiculous request to not blast it so early?

Nonetheless, I get up from my twin XL bed. It is a jumbled mess of pink sheets and baby blue blankets; I don't even try to fix it afterwards. Instead, the first thing I reach for is my vape pen.

The saying goes that the pen is mightier than the sword. In my case, I'd say that my pen is mightier than the paper. I don't remember the first time I used it. It felt like eons ago, when my friend that I met in junior year introduced me to her own. I do remember feeling one thing, the same thing I felt every time I light up the battery: this is the most glorious feeling I've ever had in my life. It's also gonna kill me someday, I know it. But I still light up. I allow the golden liquid to heat into smoke, infiltrating my lungs and ensuring every molecule be absorbed in my body. Eventually, I let out a slow, measured exhale, releasing the smoke and my anxiety in one go. It is godly. It is divine. It is fantastic. And I curse it every damn day.

Because not to sound like an outdated drug PSA, but this shit really does suck. After 5 minutes, as soon as the high wears off, the anxiety creeps back in, sometimes in more morbid forms. One time it grabbed my heart and I thought I was having a heart attack; another time, it attacked my core and I thought my stomach was turning itself inside out. My body is in its worst shape than it's ever been in its entire life, although you would never be able to tell. My 'diet' consists of shit pizza and shit breadsticks and shit wings and shit pasta, with occasional variations to 'healthier options' like sushi, while my appetite has shrunk to epic proportions (to the point that I only eat once a day). My body looks hollow, yet chunky; it has the appearance of lard. It hurts to breathe sometimes, definitely helped by my smoking habits. In truth, something went wrong in my life. And I blame you. And my goddamn amazing vape pen.