I smelled something burning. My mind signaled my body to awake and make sure the house wasn’t burning to the ground, but a massive blood rush swelled my head at any movement. A constant ringing pierced my thoughts. So, I lied still in bed ignoring the charred sent. It was Saturday, and on Saturday I wake up no later than three o’clock, regardless of whether my house is consumed in flames or not. My parents had been out of town for the past week, and I had every intention to become completely unconscious again. That is, until I started hearing voices coming from the downstairs. After reasoning whether these voices were reality or just my own post-drunken thoughts, I came to the conclusion that I actually had no idea. So I went downstairs to check. As to why the voices motivated me to get up, and the burning did not, is beyond me. Sometimes I don’t rationalize well when I want to sleep.
I don’t really know what the plan was when I got up to go after the voices. I mean even if there was like a murderer or a serial rapist or something invading my house, chances are I wasn’t gonna fight it off with a metal lunch box and no pants on. Regardless, I crept my way down the stairs with my Scooby-Doo lunch box.
The voices were now perfectly apparent and I could finally determine they were reality. The smoke I could recognize now to be that of crisp bacon, and suddenly I knew I was not dealing with any threat. The second the smell registered with my brain, I knew exactly who I was dealing with. I unclenched the handle of the lunchbox and walked into the kitchen. There sat Jacob Simpson, in my fathers favorite bath robe, reading the times and drinking coffee at my kitchen table, while Shawn Phillips tediously pushed around burnt strips of bacon in my mother’s cooking pan. I stood and said nothing. Perplexity overcame the expression on my face. I waited for any sort of acknowledgement from them to assure myself I wasn’t dreaming, and I stood still, dazed. After a few seconds my presence was recognized.
“Sup,” Jake said, with a sarcastic sort of grin hidden behind his teeth. It sort of made me want to punch him in the face, when he would act all smug and smooth like nothing was out of the ordinary. The more nonchalant he acted, the better chance there was that somebody’s life is probably at risk. Deep down inside this sort of thing amuses me, and I suppose that’s why we’ve been friends since childhood, but regardless it still makes me nervous when Jake acts calm; only because it’s a rare occasion. He moved to Waterville Valley, New Hampshire when we were freshmen, at first just to go to the snowboarding academy during the winter. But now that he’s a sponsored amateur he lives there year round, and I never really see him anymore outside the valley unless I need a large amount of pot. Thus, his sudden presence was a lot to process for my hungover state of mind. Too lazy to conjure any sort of response to Jake’s sass, I turned to Phillips, grilling away.
If you’ve never seen the look in a man’s face when absolutely no thought is being processed in their head, I suggest you find Shawn Phillips, and deeply analyze his expression, because it truly is a site to behold. I hadn’t seen Phillips in probably two years, but he still had the same old empty zombie grin that he always had. And he still loved bacon, clearly. As a little chubby kid he used to always walk around the block with strips of bacon. There was even this old saying that if bacon was being cooked in your house, Shawn was most likely within a 30-foot radius getting off to the smell. As exaggerated as that may sound the creepy thing is how accurate of a statement it actually is. The kid liked his bacon. To his credit, he slimmed up quite a bit once he grew up and really wasn’t such a bad looking kid. But, he was still sort of a space case, and sort of a deusch bag, and I can recall a few occasions I had to beat his ass when he got on my bad side. But above all, he was grilling my bacon. So I think that’s really what pissed me off about him that day. I turned back to Jake once I realized how little I wanted to talk to Phillips.
My vision burnt through Jake’s scull until he could feel it, and then he lifted his eyes to meet mine. I said, “Dude, c’mon. I mean I wake up thinking I’m about to get all raped and s*** and then I come downstairs to you in my dad’s robe and Philly F***-up eating the rest of my bacon? You couldn’t even call and ask me to get bacon in advance or something? Now I have to go all the way to the sto-…” My rant was halted by the abrupt reoccurrence of ringing in my ear.
I gave up on anger, as that is often a futile approach to Jake’s mind games, and caved. Over I walked to the kitchen table and sat on the chair next to Jake. I reached in his hand, took hold of the cigarette he was puffing, and took a few drags, “Why are you here? Just be serious for a minute. It’s been sort of a rough 24 hours…”
The night before I had gone on what some might call a, “bender”, after my girlfriend, (well, technically ex-girlfriend) Julia, decided to break things off with me. We got into a fight about some stupid s*** and then I sort of took it to another level (without getting into detail, let’s just say I said a few things about her sister that I probably shouldn’t have after she took a few shots at my mental discrepancies. All true nonetheless, but sometimes the truth isn’t what girls want to hear. Not to mention I could have cleaned up the language a little bit). Don’t get me wrong stuff like that has happened before and we always got past it, which is why I wasn’t too panicked. Nevertheless it seemed like a good enough excuse to indulge in some good, old-fashioned, self-piteous alcoholism. So, I did just that.
Suddenly Phillips turned around towards Jake, both of them smiling devilishly, only Shawn’s smile had a slight hint of Down’s syndrome to it. They started to chuckle and that really frustrated me. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to put up with Jake’s stoned sense of humor. I let them know, “Yeah I mean it’s cool how you guys just sort of broke into my house and everything, I know you’re really into that sort of s***…” I paused a moment to look at Phillips who now was snoring over the frying pan. At this point I think the bacon was burnt, but I was more occupied trying to tell if he was sleeping or not, because his eyes were open… creepy. I snapped out of my momentary daze and refocused my anger, “Jake if you don’t give me some sort of explanation for why you’re here right now being a deusch, wearing JSweet’s robe, I’m gonna stab Phillips in the neck with this salad fork.” Phillips turned abruptly. That got his attention.
“Please, don’t do that.” Shawn said, shaking his head. Then he turned back towards his bacon and I think that’s when he really woke up. His face lit up with fury and he turned towards us, fuming, “I’m over hear trying to cook you guys breakfast and you repay me by letting it get all burnt? C’mon man…” Jake and I just sat confused and silent, trying to reason with what he just said (If you haven’t noticed yet, this sort of thing happens a lot when dealing with Phillips). Exhausted by the combination of my own hangover, Phillips’s stupidity, and just the general peculiarity of the morning, I darted my head back at Jake, straight faced now.
He must have finally read the annoyance in my face, as he finally ceased his subtle smirk. Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, “Take a look at these and tell me what you see.” My glare did not leave his face still, as it seemed like this was going to be another one of Jake’s stupid gags. But, he insisted I look at the screen and his face seemed somewhat genuine, which was a rarity. So, I took his cell phone in my hand and looked. What looked like a Ziploc bag full of manure met my eyesight, and it took a few seconds of analysis to completely determine what I was actually looking at; mushrooms.
“No drugs today, Jake.”
“I’m not asking you to any take drugs DSweet, I’m asking you to eat… mushrooms.” My face reacquainted itself with the familiar pissed off expression, but Jake continued to spit his bullshit. “Mushrooms aren’t a drug, David, they are grown naturally in soil. People eat them on pizza and s*** like that every day-…” Fed up, I interrupted his propagandas tirade.
“Not today… not today. I mean me and Jules broke up last night and I’m all hungover and s***, and… I donno… it just doesn’t seem like the best idea on a day like today.” At the first mention of psychedelics, it’s no surprise Phillips joined the conversation.
“DSweet… my man…” Shawn said, “Now these aren’t just any caps we’re talkin’ about man… these are bloomers… yeah man, bloomers. You need to forget that trick Julia and get on a spiritual level with your boys today.” “Bloomers” was a sort of street lingo for a really high graded mushroom cap. Realistically, there is in fact no difference between these “bloomers” and any other cap you might take. But, that doesn’t stop weirdo hipsters like Phillips from using the phrase at will. It gives them sort of an intellectually fulfilling feeling when they talk about how much they know about their ‘shrooms. To be honest, it sort of amused me when Shawn would do this, and that’s partially why I played along.
I thought for a moment about the proposition, and looked back and forth from Jake to Shawn. I thought about my only alternative for the day, which would be to sleep for about 6 more hours until I woke up, and then most likely sit around pitying myself all day thinking about Julia. Suddenly looking for an escape to that scenario, I took the first distraction held out in front of me, “Let’s do it then. Who’s got ‘em?”
Jake and Shawn both smiled, satisfyingly, and Jake then put his arm around my shoulder, “Ahhaha, perfect… perfect. I can assure you will not be disappointed my man…” he held out his fist for me to pound, “Spacey Casey Watrows’ got some fire bloomers, but he Phillips said we gotta go pick ‘em up at his house. So, quick then… while the day is still young brethren.” He had a thing for corny vocabulary words like that… brethren?
Jake threw me my dad’s robe to put on and rushed me out the door before I even had a chance to put on clothes. Phillips raced after us, chewing away at his burnt strips of bacon. Funny how everyone gets all motivated once drugs are in pursuit.

Casey Watrows was my best friend throughout all of elementary school, and a good portion of my childhood for that matter. His mom and mine used to be good friends, and therefore so we became. His parents went through a pretty brutal divorce the summer after fifth grade, and his dad split town before it ever got finalized. Stephanie, Casey’s mom, sort of lost her cookies after that, if you know what I mean. They only moved to Rutland, the next town over, but the family cut off all communication within hours after the incident so it was nonetheless a shock. Middle School passed and I moved on, found new friends, did that whole thing. Then high school came… and all of the sudden there’s Casey again, 4 years later, with a full beard, orange spiked hair, gages in his ears, smelling like feet. Not a bad kid if you got the chance to know him, his personality didn’t change a whole lot. But, you couldn’t shake off how different his whole persona was. We had a few classes together, even hung out a few times, but it never was like it used to be.
“There’s that fucker.” Shawn pointed his stubbed index finger through the windshield and began to honk the horn of his ’99 Ford Taurus like a rabid monkey in control of a bell. Jake howled away like it was the funniest thing that ever happened as I sat clenching my head in pain. I lifted my head at Shawn’s signal and saw none other than Casey Watrows himself, yanking on an extension chord wrapped around a flailing tree branch in his front yard. Steph barked orders at him from the porch. Her voice was raspy and had Emphysema written all over it.
“To the left Casey! To the left! Get that damned stick away from the house!” She had curlers in her hair, and make up caked thickly enough on her face to form a bulletproof shield. She was wearing a green nurse’s jump suit that she worked in, with a Dale Earnhardt NASCAR jacket hanging over her shoulders. The whole scenario began to feel like a Beverly Hillbillies episode, and it made me feel sort of awkward. I was a little taken back at how worn out Steph looked only 4 short years later. I mean, I heard folklore from my mom once in a while about her shady practices, but it all sort of just sounded like gossip to me and I didn’t take it too seriously. She was a quite the flattering woman not too long ago; very charming, very beautiful. Her skin had become dried out and weathered with a rubbery looking consistency. I hesitated to introduce myself.
Finally Steph noticed our company and greeted us, “Hello boys,”
“Hi Steph,” we simultaneously spat up. She clearly didn’t recognize me to none of my surprise, and she capitalized on the chance to yell at Casey again.
“Hey’ya, ‘ya lil’ s***, your friends are here! Casey! Your friends are here!” She turned back toward the house and smiled as she walked inside. It seemed like she got an awful lot of amusement out of yelling at her son like a banshee.
Casey kept pulling on the chord for a minute or so, but soon gave up (Trust me, the branch wasn’t going anywhere). He removed the gardening gloves he was using from his hands and walked up the hill to his driveway to meet us. “How’s it hangin’ boys?”

“We’re good man… hopin’ to get a lil’ bit better though, if you know what I mean.” Jake responded. It seemed pretty obvious that none of us wanted to stay around that house for too long, so ideally we wanted to get straight to business. Unfortunately, when dealing with Casey Watrows now-a-days, a short time spent is more of a luxury than an expectance.

“I think I might be able to help you out with that,” Casey said accordingly. The three of us looked from one another smiling with hopes of a quick transaction. On the car ride to Casey’s house Jake mentioned something about some sort of a waterfall he wanted to show me, and that we could only get there in time if it was still light out when we get home. That sort of thing was enough to get Jake to rush, but he rarely ever did so. It was sort of eerie the way he only could be motivated to do the least productive things. As much as I love the kid, I have the overwhelming presumption that this mindset will be his demise if it doesn’t change any time soon.

After the hope of a quick getaway was held out in front of us, Casey ripped our hearts out just as fast. He smiled and held his hand out in front of Phillips, “Keys…” Jake and I turned to Shaun who happened to look just as confused as us.

“Oh… uh… yeah… my keys…you need my keys?” It wasn’t long before that over familiar “OH S*** I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THAT,” expression blanketed Shaun’s face. “My keys! OH… My keys… obviously.”

“Why does he need your keys, Phillips?” I said despondently.

“Yeah… I forgot to tell you guys I agreed to let Case borrow my car since he doesn’t… have one.”

“What? Why the hell would he need to borrow your car?” I said to Phillips as he stumbled over every word he said, vomiting excuses. Casey interrupted and offered up the only genuine explanation I deemed possible.

“Phillips called me up this morning to tell me about this bird he hit on his bike, and we started chatting’ about this, and about that, until finally we got around to my new ‘merchandise’ which Phillips immediately requested a mass quantity of, to no ones surprise. I told him I’d cut him a decent deal for a half oz. if I could borrow his car for a few minutes, and he made it seem like a sure thing. He didn’t say it’d be a problem…”

“Oh, no… I’m sure he didn’t,” Jake said as his hand gripped Shaun’s neck right above his spine. Shaun’s body began to cringe to the pulse of Jake’s grip and it added comic relief to the situation.
Casey took the keys and opened the door to the rusted mess Phillips called his ‘car’. He reached his head out the window to address us once more before he left.

“Feel free to work on that branch if you want. The old b**** told me if I bring it down from above the house I can sleep on the inside couch tonight, so I’d appreciate it. Not to mention there’s not much else to do around here.” He glared at the three of us emptily for a few seconds, and we all seemed to notice the awkward silence. Then he chuckled to himself, mumbled something under his breath, and left. We stared at the must left behind from the Taurus momentarily until Jake and I once again jerked our heads in the direction of Phillips.

“So how about this for a quick transaction,” Jake said sardonically. “You never cease to amaze me Phillips.”

“You know what guys, you can preach to me all you want about how I’m wasting your precious time right now getting YOU guys bloomers. But, the fact is that Casey has my car right now. So compared to me you really have nothing to be nervous about.” Surprisingly enough, Phillips did have a point. He was doing us a favor, technically, and he even put his car on lease with a future convict to do so. I doubt he was thinking of anyone’s benefit but his own when doing so, but regardless it was a bold move. We sat on the bed of an old rusted pick-up truck on Fort in the shaded part of the driveway, and lied back, bored… waiting. It took a lot of energy out of us, that awkward waiting. And we even shut our eyes to rest for a little while in silent thought since we were so burnt out. That is, except for Phillips, who we suddenly noticed was no longer sitting on the truck bed. I looked up to see where he’d gone and saw him pulling away irately at the extension chord. I shook my head and thought to myself, ‘What the hell is wrong with that guy?’


After a failed attempt at a nap, a few minutes turned to 30 minutes and I was bored of the blandness of the situation. I began to walk over to Jake, who had joined Phillips at this point, until I suddenly heard the deep pitched roar of the Taurus approaching in the distance. Sure enough, it was possible to not see the care coming from even just feet away, such a small car. It made up for that with a ruptured gas fuse in its engine that created a deep enough roar to catch the attention of a deaf man. Casey parked the car and got out. At the first sign of Casey’s return Shawn dropped the extension chord to the ground, causing the suspended branch to clank violently against another tree. The noise caused the ground to shake, and was enough to awake sleeping beauty Stephanie from her sleep. Out she ran, determined to tear Casey a new one.

“Casey! What the hell are you one of those damn slow folks or somethin’! Be a man and do something that actually means something right for once in your life. Bring that damned stick to the ground, chop it up, and quit making so much noise before you go and get the cops called on us.” Casey turned to Shawn for a moment to stare angrily at him, and he tossed over his keys.

“Caps are in the center consol. Have a nice day, fellas.” Shawn raced immediately to the car to make sure we didn’t just get stiffed, and I saw Casey walk by with a little smirk on his face when he saw. I sat in the back seat of the Phillips’s s*** box as Shawn turned around to leave in his driveway. I looked out the back window for a reason subconscious to my knowing, and saw both Casey and Steph staring back at me, eyes making contact from 40 yards out. I felt suddenly the hollowing pain of regret and began to wish I’d said something at least.
All I could think about looking out the window was an old t-shirt. You know, the kind that used to be your favorite until you grow up, find new interests, new desires, new shirts. Deep down you may want to keep wearing the shirt, and it may bring up some great memories, but it’s just not the same as it used to be. The shirt gets worn out, and eventually you both move in two different directions. Any rekindling between the two would seem forced almost. A wrinkled t-shirt at the end of my closet flashed vividly in my head.
I could only imagine how bizarre their thoughts must be.
After the wait, there wasn’t much time to kill. We ate the caps on the car ride back to Jake’s house.

There was an obvious anxiousness that plagued Jake, which became clear as soon as we got back to his house. Bloomers ideally should take about an hour or so to fully kick in, so at that point we really weren’t feeling much of anything. The three of us frantically made our way through a trail in Jake’s back woods.
“What’s good buddy, why so quiet all the sudden it’s sorta making me nervous…”
“The nerves, man, they got me. I’ve never eaten mushrooms like these before.” I paused and looked away. My face tightened in regret. To my knowledge, there wasn’t a drug in the Webster’s Dictionary that Jake didn’t have a past with. Let alone one as generically low risked compared to others as psychedelics. I gave him the same dosage of shrom, an eighth of an ounce, which Shawn and I had taken. I’d only taken caps a handful of times before in my life, and I was by no means an expert on the subject. But, an eighth seemed a little extreme for a first timer, so that left me uneasy to say the least. I shook off the sour expression and tried to give off no signs of my nervousness. The last thing you want to do when dealing with a situation like that is scare the person into insanity. I looked to focus his attention else ware.
“Eh, happens to the best of us. Don’t be such a puss. Where is this waterfall you were talking about anyways?” The three of us walked on down the path, into the abyssal woods. Wind hissed in between the trees behind me, begging me to turn back.

I first noticed the caps had kicked in about fifteen minutes in once I saw Phillips running out in front of us. He removed his shirt and focused it around the brim of his dome, as he sprinted forward. He stopped on a dime, and turned around, “False alarm… thought I saw a bear.”
Normally this sort of an act would involve a sarcastic slur at Phillips on my behalf, but instead it seemed totally logical to me what he was doing and I responded instead with, “Oh, nice… nice. WAIT… a bear you said?!” I listened and reflected on my words, as you often do during a trip, and concluded that the caps had hit us, hard. I sounded like a fool. Jake was awfully quiet at this point and kept his eyes wide, looking at the scenery around him. He said nothing.
We walked down the path aimlessly until I realized a very familiar piece of the trail. We had walked over the same wooden footbridge probably 5 times, and the connection cued my brain to realize the fifteen minute walk had turned into… well more than that it seemed. Always keep some sort of clock on your person when under the influence of psychedelics, because I can promise you nothing is more frustrating than trying to perceive time when doing so. Minutes feel like hours one minute, seconds the next.
“Yo Jake, it’s getting’ really dark man, we should probably turn back before its dark and we get lost. I don’t see a waterfall anywhere around.” We turned back the way we came and once again I found myself walking over the same footbridge. I stopped over it and began to kick it, assuring myself it wasn’t some sort of trippy game I was playing in my mind.
“Hey, Jake. I’ve seen this before man. We’re not going anywhere. This trail’s taking us in a circle.” I noticed both Jake and Shawn’s distilled eyes swell with panic at the mentioning of us being lost in the woods. I saw an ivy wall beside us and reasoned the best I could do to salvage completely chaos would be to act like I at least knew the way out. I ordered Jake and Shawn to follow me and told them that we could only get home through the ivy wall. It was parallel to where we’d been walking and it seemed it would be best to get to a road at least at this point, and out of the woods.
Somebody needed to be the first to jump through the wall and see what was on the other side, and it wasn’t particularly hard to convince Phillips to do anything while he was tripping, so he practically volunteered himself. He hesitated to finally lunge through the bush when his attention seemed to be caught by another bear, so I kicked him forward to help him out.
“Phillips… Phillips! Shawn! What’s it like on the other side? Is it as beautiful as I’d imagined?” I once again caught myself losing it once no response came from beyond the vines. I grabbed Jake’s arm, and jumped through the vines.
In front of me I could see Phillips. He was far off in the distance and you could just barely see his profile fading down the street. It looked like he was running. But running from what? I was fully prepared to chalk this one up to another bear hallucination until I looked to my right and saw a man, who I presumed to be the owner of the lawn we found our way into. It then became clear why he was sprinting away and Jake and I quickly followed.
Down the street we ran until we caught up with Shawn. What had started out as a sprint away from danger, quickly turned into a drug-induced, simultaneous jog through the neighborhoods of Sterling. Jake insisted we were going the right way back to his house. The thought of our appearance never even crossed my mind throughout the day. I was in gym shorts and a white t-shirt, still wearing my dad’s bath robe, which after our stroll through the woods wasn’t exactly in top condition. Shawn was wearing black dockers, and the shirt around his head was an XXXL sized portrait of a wolf with a squirrel in its mouth. Jake’s eyes were enough to give away his mind state. But, all of that self-anxious worry left us once we saw the tree.
It doesn’t take much to aw one who’s under the influence. With that being said, this tree called to us… and we all somehow heard its call it the same time, because quickly we found ourselves’ lying at its roots, ears to the ground. Its reddish purple leaves glistened in the late day sunlight, and a certain valued warmness could ultimately be associated with the tree. Perhaps it was indeed nothing more than a romanticized drug-induced perception. Nonetheless, we spent the last of the day’s light in some lady’s front lawn, staring with glitter in our dilated pupils at a tree we had become so overly fond of. At day’s end we walked back to Jake’s.

What seemed like such a salvation only moments ago, Jake’s room had turned into a nightmare. We sat around the table in Jake’s room and attempted to brainstorm on what we should do with the rest of our night. We sat and thought… and thought… and thought. If there is in fact one thing that caused the night to spiral downwards, it was this lengthy period of reflection. When planning a trip, always make sure you have some sort of plan for the day, on how your attention will be kept. Because I can assure you, the last thing you want is to be locked in a room with no company but a crazed version of your own thoughts. All the same, the silence must have lasted a half hour until Jake broke it. I looked in his direction and saw him, shriveled in his bed, sobbing into his dog’s bosom. His sight pierced the moving boxes on his night stand. Jake ‘s parents had been going through a divorce of their own for the past year, and to say the least it seemed he had a lot on his mind about it.
“Sometimes I feel like I just grew up way too fast man… I mean I moved out freshmen year and… I don’t know. Ever since then I feel like I’ve never really been part of much of a family. Dad was always out of town when I was home, and mom seemed lonely, but I figured it was nothing her and dad couldn’t handle. Maybe we could have had a real shot at a family if I stuck around.” Jake’s words shook me. I’d never seen him take a situation so seriously before, not to even mention his tears. I didn’t know how to react. Shawn and I sat still in silence until he broke it.
“I need to get home. I really just need to get home.” Short and sweet, I didn’t think much of this statement at the time other than its literal meaning. Weeks after the ordeal I’d found out Shawn was in fact living at Jake’s house for the past month, after his own mother kicked him out of their house. I’m sure he had plenty of the same sort of thoughts on his mind that day.
Comparisons subconsciously formed in my head between the relationship I had with my parents, compared to those around me: Casey, Jake, and Shawn. I felt like the spoiled adolescent girl who had just been called a ‘brat’ for the first time, acting so selfish and narcissistic. Having two parents who love you was a luxury I didn’t understand was so priceless before then.
The reality of myself made me sick to my stomach at that moment and I began to whimper faintly to myself, from an almost third-person perspective. Even my 82-year-old grandmother, who loved me dearly, had called to talk to me that day. I didn’t even have the courtesy to engage in a 5-minute phone call. What the hell was the matter with me? I mean clearly I cared about my family, or else I wouldn’t have been so deeply disturbed by my newfound outlook. But what stops me from realizing that same truth when I’m sober? I wish it didn’t have to be that way.
Before I could blink twice, the entire day had passed and the clock read one O’clock in the morning. By that point the trip’s intensity had died down almost completely, and our eyes each were narrowed, wondrous. Our self-esteem at that point had reached that of brittle bone, and it seemed sleep was in order. We each headed for the bedrooms.
My hands trembled at my sides, and my corpse-like physique pricked like pins and needles at any movement. Suddenly I was back in the same situation I so desperately attempted to avoid this morning, and Julia walked through the door of my thoughts. I thought about our relationship while sobbing into my pillow like a school girl. It was a very difficult relationship. Julia was very closed minded sometimes when it came to me, and I’m sure I was equally when it came to her. A very smart girl, and bright as they came, I was as exact of an opposite to her as they came, which I think is what attracted me to her so much honestly. Her physical beauty was obvious, and something to behold. However what really stood out about Julia was her kind demeanor. As such a dry-humored, not politically correct person, it felt good to be around someone who seemed so genuinely kind to everyone.
We didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things you’d hope most couples would. Our disagreements would often lead into long, repetitive arguments that we would spend relentlessly trying to prove our own point, but they’d lead nowhere. I spent the next two hours lying in bed, associating the days events with my thoughts until finally, I had an epiphany of sorts. I searched frantically through the sheets of the bed for my cell phone until I found it, and quietly zipped down the stairs to obtain more privacy. My phone dialed Jules’ number.
The number rang through to voicemail a few times, but I knew if I called her frantically enough she’d pick up eventually, and so she did. On the third attempt I heard a faded, “Hello? David is that you?”
“Yeah, it is.” I responded. It was hard to spit out what I had to say to Julia, but nonetheless if I didn’t I felt I might never get another chance to, so I continued on. “The past day, I’ve had a lot of time to sit and listen to myself, and really think about what I want. I started by thinking about how much happier I was only a day ago when we were together. I thought about all the times I’ve made you smile, and how much I really do enjoy watching that smile of yours light up at a moments notice. I thought about the good times we’ve had together, as well as the bad, and admired how truly happy those moments were. Being right doesn’t even hold a candle to the constant something I feel around you, Julia. Today made me realize it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so depressed about the reality of my life as I had been today. It was the same old behavior, same old David Sweet as always, but there was a huge hole I felt all day that brought all my realities to the surface.” She paused, confused.
“What are you trying to say, Dave, it’s very late and this is an awful lot to take in right n-“
“All I want to say, Julia, is that without you in my life, I am nothing but a hazard. You’re the only part of me that is good-natured, genuine, kind-hearted, and for the past six months it almost made me feel the same. I’ll always love you for that Julia, and I need you to understand that. That’s all I have to say. Goodnight,”
I paused for a moment hoping for a response, but found none until finally I was about to hang up. “Dave… you could come over tomorrow to talk about it if you want.”
“I could do that. Goodnight Julia.”
“Goodnight Dave… I love you.”
And at that click of the phones disconnecting, my mouth turned to a smile for the first time in two days. No drug on earth had the power to make me feel the way I did then.

I did end up going to see Jules the next day, and we did in fact make up. After a few days we got back together and nine months later, we still are dating. She leaves for college in the fall, at which point will most likely be the start of our break up process, and from then our love for each other most likely we’ll be overshadowed with new loves, and new memories. Do not be so foolish as to mistake these shadows with forgetfulness however. Love in its rawness becomes a part of you that cannot be escaped once experienced and must be held onto tightly. Its true value lies beneath the timeless truths it can teach you. Sometimes it just takes a few mushrooms to realize that.