TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SUICIDE IDEATION
You may be saying to yourself:
"Petra, how the hell can a middle-aged white broad relate to what these guys are saying?"
Let me tell you.
I've never experienced living in the ghetto or losing my friends to gang violence. I lived in suburbia--the run down part, not the new subdivision. School violence consisted of fist fights. My school was pretty damned homogeneous. There were a few Latinos, a couple of black kids, and a couple of Asians. For the most part, we were white as white could be. So no, I have not experienced the culture these guys are talking about.
What I do understand very well is this line:
"I smoke the blunt to take the pain out and if I wasn't high I'd probably try to blow my brains out."
I got called Pothead Petra back in the day. My fellow smokers said it with admiration. Those who think that "users are losers" said it with disdain.
I wasn't stupid. I got good grades. I was Goth. I was theatrical. Sometimes the darkness welled up inside me and threatened to consume me. I was sure the Devil was coming to take my soul. I thought I was so bad, so wrong, so filled with original sin that God had rejected me and this is why I felt so bad all the time.
At other times I felt like there was a wild beast inside of me that was trying to rip its way out. This beast really didn't want to harm anybody (although if some of the sneering ones had gotten in its way they may well have lost their heads.)
The Beast was bored of the lame ass crap that the school was cramming into our brains. It wanted to tear out, jump through the window, and run off down the highway in search of the nearest rock concert. It wanted to drink wine and dance naked and maybe have sex if it found a particularly appealing fellow, but honestly, sex didn't much enter into the thought process. It was mostly about having carefree, wild fun--about being able to at last express what I was feeling inside.
But I couldn't. The wild me wouldn't be accepted, and certainly the gloomy, melancholy, anguished me wouldn't be. So I drank and I smoked. The others who smoked with me seemed to like me well enough, but I don't think they understood me.
I didn't understand me.
I graduated high school, went to college, met a guy, got married, had kids, got divorced, had lots of shitty relationships, trusted the wrong people time and again, and hated myself. A movie was always playing in my head that I desperately wanted to come true. It hurt like all the fires of hell that it couldn't.
It took me what may well be more than half a lifetime to start accepting myself.
Before writing off people like the guys in the video, take the time to try and understand where they're coming from. Take the time to try and understand the circumstances they come from.
Users are not always losers.
I always hated that damn PSA.
I'm no longer Pothead Petra, and I haven't been for a long time. That doesn't make me some kind of saint.
I now understand the nature of the beasts within me. There's a psych diagnosis for that. It doesn't mean that the things I felt are invalid.
Until we can all start to open our hearts and love a little more, to really love and accept each other, people are going to have to smoke or drink or shoot up or pop a pill to take the pain out. And it's not right to judge them for feeling like that's what they have to do in a world full of pain.
We can hope that one day they don't feel the need to do those things any more. What we shouldn't be doing is using words like "loser" to describe these actions. Being an addict or hurting so much that you can't see any way except to dull the pain with substances does not make a person a loser. It makes them a soul in need of compassion.
There's enough harshness in the world. Let's try to understand our fellow travelers a little better before we point fingers and cast judgment.
Peace,
DJ Petra
