Nothing is not about dosing.

1.

It took me two full days to come down from a cold brew, casually ordered and surely infused with meth.

Two days to stop cranking refresh on Facebook Marketplace because my kid needs a Patagonia nano-puffer and they’re all the wrong size. What is the difference between 3 and 3T? What is a baby and what is a toddler and what is a kid? Can I sell this fancy mattress topper for $30 even though it’s bleached in a neat rectangle from repeated exposure to a window full of sun?

If I laid still on my back and placed a glass of water on my chest, I would see the perfect surface jostle to the beat of my pummeling heart. Like a T-Rex approaching in the ill-fated amusement park that is my ribcage.

I am in my bed, but I am not really. I am five months in the future, deep in VRBO (verrrrr-BOH), planning a vacation that may not happen. Because I have already planned for the big things in sooner months, and this coffee will kill me if I don’t keep running.

Caffeine is an Olympian, and I am a discus launched with a centrifugal thwang to the end of the earth. They should celebrate this feat with bouquets of roses! I should be more careful!

2.

Stupid Time™ is a form of harm reduction. It is mindful titration of a powerful and dangerous substance that can ravage people if not careful. It’s where instead of scrolling TikTok by yourself in a room that could be anywhere, you do it together with someone you love.

Rules and callouts: (1) One feed. One phone. (2) Limit yourselves to fifteen minutes. Allow for up to forty if the algorithm is slinging heaters. (3) Only one extended hoof-shaving video per session. (4) Pre-curation by the owner of the phone/app is permitted and indeed encouraged. (5) As this is co-viewing, you may need to tolerate some amount of “ball and chain humor” — playfully self-loathing dude memes that operate within a larger patriarchal context and are mostly shot in Midwestern, new-construction homes. (6) Know that your co-viewer may yet again express a desire to try smelling salts. You don’t have to remind him that he says this every time, but you can if you want to.

3.

If there are people who haunt you, like literally in your dreams, dreams that you have over and over, so frequently that it becomes important to track them with tally marks on the back of a cork-covered journal — then my husband suggests thinking about it like this:

The heartbreak that happened twenty years ago was akin to a destabilizing drug experience. It started beautiful, as so many do, and then blew out your eardrums with its intensity.

It may have felt more like a poison than drugs. An over-heavy dousing of kerosene into your young brain that was still made of green, bendy saplings. So, instead of bursting into flames, you soaked up all the chemicals and altered in irreparable, cellular ways.

Regardless, if you’re small and need validation like you need your own skin and hair and clothes, thunderous heartbreak is going to be a lot to take in one sitting, and it’ll probably stick with you for the rest of your life.

4.

One little ciggy every once in a while won’t kill me. Better that than a cheeseburger, said my former nutritionist, which is, in retrospect, appalling.

5.

This is a plea to double-check you are taking the medication you think you’re taking. Especially if it’s something you take every day and that causes acute withdrawal side effects when abruptly discontinued.

That way you won’t end up in the ER, describing how every time you start falling asleep, your legs jerk you awake, like they know you’re tired, like they’re fucking with you.

That way you won’t find yourself in Johnston Medical Supply buying full-leg compression sleeves from a man who takes your credit card with carbon paper and a manual crank.

That way you won’t wonder about exhaustion-induced psychosis.

I was on day three of no sleep, waiting for a prescription that could shove me into unconsciousness when the gods intervened. They tossed me an inkling like a small bag of dried beans:

I was in withdrawal. I had filled my pill organizer with Omega 3s, prenatal vitamins, and what I thought were my SSRIs. Instead, I had inadvertently added something else to each day, something for indigestion.

6.

Too much looking directly into your child’s eyes can fuck you up. It’s too religious, too bright. I’m talking hoards of roaring angels, gold leaf everything, an acid trip on three tabs when you would have been fine with one. And now the sun is shining through a lemon tree and your Whistler t-shirt is wet with tears.