By Debbie Weiss

It was one of those nights when I knew I’d wake up a different person. My anxiety was jumping up on me like a wire-haired terrier that had to relieve itself.

I’d been at the Haight Ashbury street fair with Max the day before and he’d pointed to a sign in front of Amoeba Records saying that the store houses a clinic where you can get a medicinal marijuana card. He said, “You’ve always said you wanted a card—would you really get one?”

Sure. So, I go inside and fill out these forms, handing them back to the receptionist who looks like a scaled-up Courtney Love in a red cocktail dress. She assures me my driver’s license will be returned to me. I expected the doctor to look like one of ZZ Top, but he’s a dignified family practitioner who looks like Archbishop Desmond TuTu. He listened to my anxiety and sleep complaints.

“Did something bad happen to you?” he asked.

“My husband George died of cancer a little over two years ago. He was in denial about being sick and wouldn’t let his doctors talk to me,” I said.

He nodded sympathetically, making a little “tsk” sound.

He asked, “What do you do that’s sensual?”

“Um, I have a boyfriend,” I stammered.

“No, sensual,” he clarified, “Do you get massages?”

“Not really.”

“Well, you should. And you should go on long, aimless drives stopping wherever you want to,” he advised.

When he went to take my blood pressure, I told him I have white coat hypertension; my blood pressure shoots up in medical offices. Probably because when I was ten, my mother got sick and went to Kaiser Medical Center and never came out. The doctor sang to me in a silly voice while he measured my blood pressure. The result came out normal, 120/80.

He gave me the prescription. I asked, “Should I worry about getting addicted?”

“You have an awareness. You’re always there looking over your shoulder at yourself. That’s huge. You won’t let yourself get addicted.”

I wished he weren’t already married.

When I came out of the office thirty-six minutes later, Max was vibrating with impatience, his head twitching a bit, spiky gray hair standing up on end.

“Why were you in there that long?” he demanded. “The receptionist said no one has ever been in there over a half hour. Look at all these people waiting,” he added.

“We were talking,” I said, “He was trying to help me.”

“I thought you guys were doing it in there,” he muttered.

No, it was deeper. I was understood.

After the street fair, Max and I went to a Berkeley dispensary on a tree-lined, residential street across from a pretty cafe. The air seemed green, a sense of promise, out with my boyfriend, trying new experiences. When I came out with my first ever pot order, Max wanted me to go back to the dispensary to pick up a couple things for him.

I refused. It would look like I was being directed by a pot-loving friend capitalizing on my card. Every kid who’s seen an After School Special knows that the boy who wants you to do something wrong isn’t really your true friend.

Max has smoked pot almost forever: a couple of friends keep him supplied. But he’d been happy that now I could pick up a couple things for him…I mean us. So, why hadn’t he ever gotten his own card?

“I don’t want to be on any list for that,” he explained.

“But I should be?” I asked. “I was a lawyer.” Maybe he was just too lazy to get a prescription. Or he didn’t want to pay the fifty-four dollars for the card. But I don’t trust someone who wants me to do something they won’t.

“It’s no big deal. The pot’s for us,” he added.

It was a big deal. I am not a drug dealer. I’m a person suffering from “depression and anxiety.” My grief therapist said so. A suburban homeowner. A former Rotarian. A Porsche driver, for God’s sake. Max is the perennial pot smoker. Besides, wouldn’t a real boyfriend want to go into a weird place like an urban drug dispensary with me? (Even though it wasn’t weird). Wouldn’t he want to guide me in my choices? (Even though he’d confused the effects of indica and sativa, the two main strains of pot).

My gifts with purchase included an innocent enough-looking joint. I lit up my freebie the next night while watching Revenge, an evening soap opera like a modern Dallas. Except that it’s set in the Hamptons. But it still feels kind of like a drag show. The women hang around their houses in low-cut, pencil-skirted dresses paired with spiky pumps and speak in drawn-out, slow voices.

These super-rich people have to stay together despite their vast resources because otherwise there’d be no TV show. I don’t have to stay in one place, or stay with Max, but I can’t decide anything beyond what to buy. And that I don’t want to be alone.

Since George died, I never know what I want except at the most basic level, like a child. I might crave a spicy scallop roll, or a pile of dim sum, or aqua colored sheets, or a new cactus plant. I can’t figure out where I want to live, or who I want as a partner or if I want to travel.

The Voice In My Head doesn’t let me relax. It tells me I need to sell my house or I’ll never get over my memories. It insists that I sell the Porsche since it was George’s car. It demands that I work on social media so I have a writer’s platform so I don’t die with nothing to show for it. It chides me that Max is not my “forever” person.

I’d hoped the pot would sedate The Voice and we’d both agree that I should move to an apartment by the ocean or figure out how use my law degree in a cool way or become a full-time stoner with little short-term memory, but no anxiety. I would sedate The Voice with edible pot cookies and put it to sleep with campy TV serials. And maybe lull it into happiness by curling up with Max.

I wish.

When Max and I first got together, I was transported by the time we’d spend just lying around. He’d rub my back and I’d feel my bones relax. I’d sleep next to him and it was like warm silk. I felt softened. We were so lucky to have found each other in dreary Internet dating land. He’d play guitar in bed; I was soothed.

Then money cropped up. Max wanted to split the cost of things equally so when we’d go out to eat, I’d hear, “Isn’t it your turn?” But Max had picked the restaurant, and he didn’t seem to notice what things tasted like; he’d pick places that sucked. It felt weird to drive to his house, roll out of bed then pay for dinner like I had to pay to be with him. I could be slept with, but not cherished. Not since I became a widow.

After puffing away, I felt restless. Then anxious. I couldn’t sleep. My heart was pounding. I called Max, questioning him about why he’d been so disappointed I hadn’t filled his order for him. I didn’t want to admit that I was an incompetent pot smoker.

I couldn’t ask him to come over. I couldn’t really rely on him. A true boyfriend that was meant-to-be would have intuited my distress. But we just argued about his making requests on my pot card. And taking my car to the Haight Ashbury.

I finally got off the phone and hung out with my joint-induced anxiety. I slipped into dark dreams, awakening out of them with a jolt. The next morning I felt tired, resigned to an inertia that settles in like slow-growing mold.

Max said I take everything too seriously. This from someone who says I should get over George when he’s convinced his ex-wife of ten years ago ruined his life. But they had great sex every night including the last night they were together. I didn’t need to know that.

But maybe I did. And I need to decide what I want besides imported brie and candles that smell like the ocean.

•••

DEBBIE WEISS blogs at www.thehungoverwidow.com and at The Huffington Post. She’s writing a memoir and anti-advice manual about widowhood. Her work has appeared in xojane, Better After Fifty, and The Erma Bombeck Humor Writer’s Workshop.