I smoked weed on 4/20 and had a conversation with my dog

Sobriety is going great. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I called in sick again.

I dropped off Starbucks for my wife at work. On my way home, I stopped at the CBD Shaman to buy a joint to celebrate 4/20. They had a special— $4.20 joints, can you believe that? I’m a firm believer that if you’re gonna be an absolute piece of shit, you gotta do it in style.

Alright, now where do I smoke this thing? I’m normally not a smoker. Edibles and mood stabilizers are more my style. I decided to take a walk through the field across the street from my house (that’s a clue, hackers!). Walking a joint, smoking a dog, what’s better than this? Huh?

Five minutes into our walk, I had to flick a tick off Butter’s head. It’s the fifth one we’ve found on her in a week. Supposedly, they’re really nasty in the spring in Wisconsin. We found that out the hard way.

I spent the rest of the walk choking my dog, trying to keep her in the center of the path, away from the ticky tall grass on the border.

“I’m telling you, man. I keep telling you about these ticks and you don’t believe me,” I said.

As we sniffed our way home, a lady from three houses down locked her storm door, wrapped a sweater around her waist and made a B-line toward us in the field. I drifted to the left with Butter, hoping to dodge her boomer attack.

“Hello,” she said with a polite, innocent smile.

“Hi,” I replied, pinching a lit joint between my teeth.

I kept walking and so did she.

At my old apartment complex, the chick from Unit 3 would sit in the backyard and smoke joints in her car from dusk till dawn— literally. It got confusing after a while, like, bruh, where are you getting all this weed? What do you do for a living where you can afford the sheer amount of weed that is needed to power your life? That’s crazy.

Sketchy people doing sketchy shit. I used to see it every day, didn’t phase me one bit.

Then about two months ago, Abby and I moved into a rich white people neighborhood. Now I’m the one they gossip about. I’m the chick smoking joints in her car. I’m easily the sketchiest person in like a ten-mile radius.

You can take the guy out of the lower-middle-class neighborhood but you can’t take the lower-middle-class neighborhood out of the guy.

I sat in my car to finish the joint.

A public works van drove by. I made eye contact with the driver two seconds after inhaling.

I swear to God if somebody calls the cops…

If one of these assholes says a word to me, I’m gonna turn into a libertarian so fast.

“I’m a goddamn taxpayer, you hear me!? You’re telling me I can’t consume a product that I bought legally while standing on my property that I rent? I’m sorry, I thought this was America!”

Fuck these assholes, honestly. I get why black people get annoyed by us. It only took ten years of being poor to figure it out. For those first 8 years or so, I kinda tricked myself into believing that I was still middle class. Like one day, I’m gonna figure it out and blend into this horrible inbred corporate landscape. But the older I get, the more I realize I’m never gonna fit in.

I’m too weird. I’m too introverted. I’m too cynical. It’s just who I am on a cellular level. I’m a real Debbie Downer. I’m really the ultimate emo or goth kid. This worldview should’ve been bullied out of me in high school but somehow I still have the personality of a 16-year-old girl who cuts herself and lets the blood drip on an Edgar Allen Poe poem that she printed out and she then takes a picture of it and puts it on her Myspace page to get attention.

“Well, then, why don’t you change?” Butter asked.

“I don’t know, Bubs. Look, I know I said I was gonna be sober— there’s still a part of me that really wants to do that. But I’m telling you man, this life + job + mental health situation is— it’s not working for me. Something needs to change and I think it’s my job. I need to find a way to work from home. I’m just happier when I’m with you. There’s nobody to say mean shit to me, to burn me out, to make me feel ashamed of myself.”

Butter licked her ass.

“Just give me a week, OK? I’m seeing the psychiatrist next Friday, that’s the earliest she could get me in. I need to be on different meds. Or more of the same meds. Maybe I need ADHD medication again. That shit got me through high school and college, maybe it can get me through this job. I might be autistic. I’m gonna ask about that, too.”

“Don’t you see the cycle you’re in, though?” Butter said. “Like, I think you say you wanna quit to justify the addiction. You’re just trying to avoid feeling guilt for all the bad shit you’ve been doing. You need an excuse to run to Kwik Trip at 8:55 p.m. and grab two 24oz cans of Milwaukee’s Best Ice so you tell yourself, OK, this Sunday, that’s my last day. After that, I’m getting sober.

Your subconscious mind is saying whatever it has to say to trick your conscious mind into using again. You think the only time you can truly be yourself is when you’re drunk or high, but it’s not true. You can be yourself around me and I love you.”

“I know Butter,” I said, gazing wistfully into the moor. “Dad’s gonna get better soon, quoth the Raven, nevermore.”