The Sun

Stoned

I was not lucid. My mind was lost in delusion but I couldn't tell the illusion from reality. I was sitting on a very small island (a rock) in the middle of a very large body of water. A shark (the man-eating kind, I must clarify this because apparently the other kind only eats man out of some kind of idle curiosity rather than actual hunger) was swimming around and around the rock. I mean island. A huge storm was brewing overhead. Thunder and lightning blistered and rolled with ferocious might. Any minute now it would let go and unleash its fury. At least three feet of rain would fall all at once and flood my little oasis, leaving me the dinner of one hungry, circling, patient and quite frankly irritating shark. A seagull, the only one for miles and apparently hungrier than I, swooped low and snatched up the only food I had (basically my last meal) right out of my hand and just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse the shark grew legs, walked up onto the shore and introduced itself as my mother. I swear!!

To this day I proclaim long and loud that this was the sad state of my reality at the very moment I woke up but… I was stoned out of my gourd so what do I know?

Jackson insists that really a lot of people, most of whom I did not know burst into my room, making a lot of noise and frantically kissing me, hugging me and shouting at me as if I were dead or deaf, rather than simply and previously quite happily stoned. It was very scary.

The hot head (apparently my brother) was yelling at the Doctor. I was not too upset about that because he was one of the HMO nightmares and the hot head was a pretty impressive yeller. The shark that really did turn out to be both my mother and a curiosity-based man-biter, was kissing me with all the ferocity of the other kind of man-eating shark. The HMO Doctor was yelling at Dr. Ross, which did upset me because I really liked him. My shark mother did too if the frosty zingers she was shooting at the HMO guy was anything to go by. I think he still has frostbite on his ... OOOPS!

Dr. Ross was trying to remain focused and explain to the shark lady that I do not know who she is so perhaps she should stop trying to devour me. The hot head started yelling at Dr. Ross for making his mother cry again after he had just gotten her to stop and the HMO guy made the mistake of trying to sneak out just as a huge crack of thunder blasted the door open and broke his nose. Suddenly the thunder made one more huge blast as Jackson stepped over the quite profusely bleeding HMO nightmare and roared at all of them to get the heck out of my room. Since he was very purple when he said it and not his usual very good-looking self, everyone made haste to listen. And then I promptly released the pent-up flood of tears, all three feet at once just as I predicted. But as with all storms, once they blow themselves out, they leave clear, crisp, and sometimes devastated peace behind them. This storm was no different. Jackson climbed up beside me on the bed. He pulled me into his arms and rocked me just like the child I had become. ❤️