“And now I tell you openly: you have my heart, so don’t hurt me… You’re what I couldn’t find…”

I’ve never experienced anything more ethereal than when our eyes met before homeroom. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, but it hung in the air like an eternal sunrise. Nothing I’ve experienced since has matched this feeling- for only a moment, I stood before the face of God. Drug people lament the way it used to be, before things were cut with fillers; watered down; muddled; meaning progressively lost; purity replaced by mayhem; innocent experimentation escalating to candyflipping handfuls. 

The first moment you fall in love; the first semester at college, and you’re popping pills at a party- throbbing waves of intensity. And you think you’ll take that feeling with you, like you finally won the ring-toss at a carnival. This is your big pink elephant, and it’s yours forever. You think it’s going to feel that way every time, with every girl, but every time you go back, there are more pieces missing. The fifth time through the haunted house at Adventureland and the plastic skeleton doesn’t have the same resonance. You become the old, recluse pothead rolling his eyes at kids going on stoner adventures- paint chipping away; hardwood floors stained; crabgrass growing through the cracks of the cement.

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