Sublime

obdurate.

garrulous

Sobriety was my painstaking resurrection. It was my return to wild. It was one long remembering. It was realizing that the hot electric thunder I felt buzzing and rolling inside was me— trying to get my attention, begging me to remember, insisting: I’m still in here.

They tend to be high most of the time, so they’re not into purely sober living, but they don’t spend their days in the dereliction of the addicted, with the relentless anxiety that there will never, in all the world, be enough. I fill a glass from the tap. They don’t have a filter installed on the faucet like Nadine does, which means their tap

just as Grace turned to cannabis to help her fall asleep. Often, she was so overstimulated that she struggled to maintain focus. Week after week, she’d collapse like a puppet at the end of a show. If she was going to be able to listen to herself and what she needed, she’d need more silence and more space.

This did not feel like real life, exactly, but nowadays what did?