Humboldt Stories: Caitlin Wakes Up

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Sharon Letts

It’s not Weeds, it’s real
By Sharon Letts

The sound of Jake getting ice in the middle of the night startled Caitlin out of a sound sleep. It was 2:30 a.m., and as was her modus operendi, she lay there, unable to sleep, listening as the ice dropped into his bong one by one. She then followed the trail of his movements through sound as he puttered about, alone.
It takes a life together to have intimacy, and she was wanting.
Jake often stayed up late and slept half the day away. They were surrounded by redwoods, but she could count on one hand how often they had hiked together, let alone waked and baked together.

True, he had chronic pain and suffered from anxiety, combined with sleep disorders. His list of ailments was as long as hers for reasons to medicate. 
He would say, “I’m an artist, I stay up late to paint.” The truth was he rarely painted anymore, though she knew he wanted to.
He had taken to cruising Facebook and watching TV, for the most part. While her head understood his need for time to himself, her heart felt only rejection. They were at an impasse.
Not able to get back to sleep readily, Caitlin got out of bed and filled her pipe with the larf Jake amply provided for her.
She could hear his bong rip from the living room and decided to join him.
He was sitting in front of his laptop. The wooden box holding his smoking implements sat on the table next to him, his bong nearby. More than half a dozen Mason jars fanned out across the table top, filled with the good bud he only shared with her on occasion.
He had taken to wearing headphones as a courtesy -a sad compromise, she felt. He never heard her coming. 
She hesitated, knowing there was a chance he was partaking of porn – another rift in the relationship.
 “It’s classic porn!” he’d defend. “It’s not personal, I just like it. It’s not that big of a deal, besides, you go to bed too early.”
It was true. She knew many friends, women included, who dug porn. The truth was, she did have school in the morning, and he did not. The chasm widened.
Then she saw it. The Facebook page of the woman he had an affair with months ago. The woman he said he ended it with, or so she was told.
Caitlin was nowhere near getting over the pain of his indiscretion. It had been months and she was still questioning his every move – if he received a call, a text… anything, she wanted to know who it was. He claimed her suspicions were driving him away, that she was “paranoid,” and “obsessed.” 
They say you are not paranoid if they are really after you.
He was in the middle of sending the woman a message… at three in the morning.
Caitlin removed a headphone from one ear and said, “I see what you are doing.”
A busted man is a sorry sight.
Jake attempted to defend his undeniably guilty action in an un-defendable situation.
“I was just wondering how she is,” he attempted. “I still have feelings for her. I feel like something’s wrong. We have a cosmic connection… “
His words cut like a clean grinder. Her hands shook with fear; she could feel her heart in her throat, and blood rushing to her face. 
“You said I was paranoid… you said I was obsessed!” Caitlin’s voice rose, tears running down her face. 
She was the fool and she knew it. When a man looks elsewhere and lies about it, you may as well pick up your pipe and leave the room, because there’s always another grow girl that will hand it to him from the other side.
Reality bites

There’s a double threat to domestic violence in a grow house.
Even if it’s a legal grow and you are dying of cancer, if neighbors complain, you will get shut down. It doesn’t matter if it’s Butte or Humboldt County. If children are involved they get taken away.
The last one standing loses it all – the medicine, the truck, the dog, and a mandatory five years of your life, if convicted by the Feds.
No reasoning with Peter Pan
Caitlin knew Jake would do just what he liked, when he liked, and he had the money and time to do it. Infidelity was just another treat for the pipe, so to speak.
He lived his life by the cycle of the lights, and all the reconfigurations of the all the rooms in the world wouldn’t change this grow.
They called it the “Peter Pan Principle.” The business had made him a man-child. He didn’t have to keep regular hours, or get a real job. He had no one to answer to – he didn’t have to grow up.
Blue Dreams

Caitlin gave up, as was her only option. She didn’t like how she sounded, standing there in the wee hours of the morning, trying in vain to get through to a man who was already gone from her.
She went back to bed, alone. It was now 4:20 a.m. 
“Irony,” she thought, and reached for her pipe on the bedside table, filling it with larf. 
“At least it’s “Blue Dream,” she whispered to the night, weary from the fight. 
As she drifted off her own blue dreams floated across the ceiling, out her window, and up and over the vast redwood canopy nearby. Through her tears she dreamed of a better life, and a man who would lie down next to her each night, putting her above all, resisting temptation, and thinking her worthy of his best bud.

Sharon Letts
“Humboldt Stories” author Sharon Letts

Editor’s note: Sharon Letts began her love of gardening in Southern California by her mother’s side, watching as she buried fish heads at the base of roses.

At 24, Sharon hung her shingle, “Secret Garden,” planting flower beds for dainty ladies. Gardening led to producing and writing for television with “Secret Garden Productions.”

Today Sharon makes her home in Humboldt County, cannabis capitol of the world, where she continues to write about gardening and all that implies, advocating for the bud, and writing for many magazines, including Toke of the Town.

Her series, “Humboldt Stories,” is a fictional account, based on fact, of the Humboldt grow scene. Tag line: “It’s not Weeds, it’s real.”

With her partner, Craig Carroll, they pen “Road Trip: In Search of Good Medicine,” touring the Golden State, following the green rush.

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