The Tree of Life

She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: And happy is every one that retaineth her.

— Proverbs 3:18

Smoked a lot of trees

enough to make a nation heal

— The Lonely Rager

I thumbed through the forms. A checklist for PTSD. The trauma listed: car accidents, violence, death. None of them fit the bill.

What if this doesn't work? Just make up a story about being molested — that's what Orlando told me years before. I couldn't do it. I needed something closer to the truth. Something believable. I needed to prove that I was suffering from PTSD to get this Medical Marijuana Card.

I'd rehearsed it with my wife the night before. What if I tell them I grew up in a cult? Whoever was on the other side of this door would be my first audience. The thing is, I'd never really considered my upbringing traumatic. It's just how I grew up.

I looked up at the woman sponsoring the day. Big, Black, happy as a kite. I filled out the form, handed over the clipboard, and waited.

"Mr. McPherson?"

I took a deep breath and headed down the narrow hall to a small room in the back. I sat across from an older Spanish woman, late 50s. She looked like Aunt Rosa. She reminded me of a church sister.

Damn. I hope this woman is not a church woman. I prayed she wasn't a Christian. Or at least not the same strain as me.

"Hi. So tell me why you're here."

"Where do you want to start?"

What I wanted to say was that I grew up afraid of dying. Not afraid of death — afraid of the timing of it. Afraid of getting hit by a car on the way home from the wrong place and going straight to hell. Afraid of the rapture catching me on a bad night. In college a guy named Tyrone came back from the club drunk and crashed his car, and for weeks the only question that mattered was where he'd ended up.

Outside that world, the fear sounds crazy. Inside it, it's #13. Declaration of faith. Jesus could come back at any moment. And so you better be ready.

I'd never said any of this out loud.

Here I was, trying to get weed to cope with anxieties brought on by the church. My livelihood was at stake. Weed made it all easier. I'd occasionally get paranoid, but I was getting better. And I knew it had everything to do with —

[queue the tire screech]

— It was a stretch.

Growing up, we looked at other sects — Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons — as cult-ish. Our church was different. We had the truth. The Church of God has 30 million members worldwide. It made its way to Jamaica in 1917 as the New Testament Church of God. That branch made its way to Bridgeport, CT, where it found me.

"Tell me more." She took out a pen and pad.

I let out a big sigh. "Where should I start?"

"Wherever you want."

"I guess I'll start when we came to America."

"Who's we?"

"Me and my mom."

"Go on, continue…"