of getting high

I got high for the first time in my life tonight.

Growing up I was a "good girl." More truthfully, I was afraid.

I'd never even smoked a cigarette.

I kept waiting for it to hit me. I was drinking beer. We were watching hockey. The smoke burned the back of my throat, familiar and strange at the same time. I waited. And I waited. And I waited.

Then suddenly I realized it didn't matter. I laid back on the couch and just stared at the tv. My friends were laughing and talking around me, but I wasn't really paying attention. They became a comforting sort of surround sound of noise, and I?

I was calm.

I wasn't worried about food or calories or my weight or how many minutes I'd logged on the treadmill or my job search. I wasn't anxious. I wasn't anxious at all.

That's when I realized I was high, and I had to suddenly fight a mad desire to laugh. I could've laughed and laughed and laughed forever and ever. It'd snuck up on me, so subtle. I settled on grinning.

"What's so funny?" Someone asked, grinning back at me.

"Everything." I said, and they laughed. But I was too comfortable, too relaxed to mind. The couch underneath my bare feet felt so soft. And there was nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear.

At least, not until tomorrow.