As a little girl, whenever I was alone – outside digging in the dirt or absent-mindedly swinging on the swing set, splashing or playing in the bathtub – I would start humming a tune. I’d start softly and then grow bolder, add in little trills and jazzy riffs, each note a bit louder than the next.
As I got older, I’d experiment with dropping my voice down to get to the lower notes and more dramatic effects. I had been exposed to singers like Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, and then to songwriter artists like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Carole King. I listened to James Taylor, Cat Stevens and 60s Motown, and I recall at age twelve or thirteen thinking that Phoebe Snow was the ultimate in cool. Singing brought me freedom and joy, always, or at least until the pain started, and I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.
Over those years and the many that followed, in my late teens and early twenties, I didn’t do that much singing, but on the occasions when I did, singing was one of the few things I could do to forget almost completely the way my body felt. During those moments, I tasted a little bit of freedom and was released from the pain and the loss of everything I used to be – all of my former life – even for a few minutes.
I have noticed lately, though, that during the process of taking my cannabis medicine that I am humming again, albeit weakly with little breath or power. The humming grows stronger as I feel the medicine move through my system and I find myself adding jazzy riffs right and left, treating my voice like a slide trombone. I can go mournfully low and tragic like Billie and then trill upwards sweet and high like Ella. I imagine myself as sultry and sassy, as confident as Peggy Lee.
It’s as if cannabis has helped me to unlock the box in which I’ve kept my own personal songbird. This may be a small thing, but if anyone knows how it feels to be trapped in a constantly malfunctioning body, they would realize what an enormous gift it is to feel well, to feel strong and capable at something again for the first time in over a decade. I was locked in a prison of illness and pain, and cannabis unlocked the door for me to break free.
Elise R., as told to me in February of 2016 and whose story appears on the following pages.