8.1 billion people on this earth,
and Miss Hopelessness lives right beneath my skin,
the quiet, exhausted voice of my own subconscious keeping watch in the dark.
She isn't an enemy I can just throw away.
She is the part of me that remembers every drop of blood,
the part that carries the exact, crushing weight of four quiet names,
the part that built high walls after the courtrooms and the cold systems tore the roof off our world.
When the sun goes down, she sits heavy in my chest,
whispering that the damage is too deep,
wrapping her grey fingers around my wrists,
pulling the oxygen straight out of my lungs
because she thinks shutting down is the only way to keep us from feeling any more pain.
There is no fairy tale wrap-up here.
No neat, happy ending where the scars vanish and the quiet stops screaming.
She wants to starve us in that silence.
She lets the violent tremor take over my hands.
She lets the blinding pressure behind my eyes build until I can't breathe,
trying to freeze me in place so the world can't hurt us again.
And then the cannabis steps in—not to fight her, but to calm her down.
It’s cannabis, plain and simple, reaching into the darkest, rawest corners of my mind.
It doesn't try to erase Miss Hopelessness or pretend she isn't real.
It just quietly reaches into the dark spaces of my spirit
and gently loosens her suffocating grip on my throat.
It speaks directly to my subconscious in a language of pure peace,
soothing the terrified, hyper-vigilant part of me that has been on guard for way too long.
That’s what this plant does. It calms the storm inside my own head. Cannabis kept me alive.
It is the blinding, white-hot headache softening into a quiet shadow behind my eyes.
It is the violent shaking in my fingers coming to a slow, still rest while I sit alone in a cold car after midnight.
It is the small, sacred miracle of holding down a warm meal when years of heartbreak have made everything taste like dust and ash.
It tells my subconscious that it’s safe to rest for a moment.
The cannabis uncinches the heavy iron armor so my body doesn't drop dead from the strain.
It cradles my shattered nervous system,
buying me four hours of quiet sleep
so Miss Hopelessness doesn't have to spend all night holding her breath.
Let them throw their cheap judgments at the mothers surviving off this plant.
This leaf didn't break me—it was the gentle hand that kept my own mind from tearing itself apart when everything else fell away.
It gave me back my breath when I was suffocating in my own grief.
It kept blood pumping through my heart when my spirit wanted to stop.
There may not be a pristine, happy ending waiting at the end of this road.
The fight has cost too much, and the empty rooms are still there.
But my subconscious isn't screaming anymore.
Miss Hopelessness has finally settled into peace.
I am still breathing, still standing in the ruins,
and as long as this cannabis can soothe the deepest parts of me,
we will keep living through the dark.
2muchthc.com| REAL STORIES OF SURVIVAL & RELIEF"
