[CONTENTID1]I[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2] Coffee Girl and Cocoa Boy[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3] a/n: Warning! Bad habits and mentions of recreational drug use and depression.

    Okay, so, I'm just gonna get straight to the point.

My name is Aubrey Ciara Dennison. I lived here in the suburbs of Sacramento, California, all my god forsaken life. I am seventeen years old, and uh, I'm a vaper. A heavy one at that, too.

So, there's not much to the introduction. Don't expect me to ramble on about a broken childhood or some bullied life or somehow gotten traumatized over kittens getting killed. And no, not that it has ever happened nor have I seen such a thing, really. I'm just listing out examples. But it doesn't disregard the fact that my life is incredibly boring because it's not. I mean, come on, we're talking about California here where we're nationally known for the most diverse state in the entire country outside of New York.

However, it's not interesting either. Guess you can say I am going through a typical teenage phase. Ya know? Growing up and abandoning your childlike innocence...- or in my case, accidentally stumbling across R-rated websites as a merging tween when in fact I was looking for online games to play. So, let's see, we got that, then entering a phase where rock music embodied the entirety of my life.

Day in and day out, earphones buried deep inside my ears as I blasted Diary of Jane and So Cold by Breaking Benjamin and Going Under by Evanescence while I'm donned in pitch black clothing and fists shoved into the depths of my bagged jeans. Soon after came the Tumblr phase where I clung to my laptop like it was my literal lifeline, my obsession, my first love, my everything. I would spend hours outside of school on various of fandoms and muse about life and how depressing it can be. How everything is just hard and stressful and not worth much other than dank memes.

Just thinking about it makes me cringe internally.

Anyways, after that phase then comes to this estranged sweet sixteen where you're then introduced to emotions foreign and familiar to you. Puberty reaches its ultimate form and you are now feeling and touchy and emotional and all the goddamn time. Sometimes I just wanted to throw a temper tantrum over petty stuff like ice cream dropping on the concrete pavement, and there's other times when I would just sit and cry for hours on end over nothing. It didn't make sense, and guess I wasn't supposed to make sense of it. Hell, I couldn't really understand what I felt because I had no justified reasons for feeling it.

I mean, I got two parents, two siblings, and two pets. I have great friends and my school life is average but not abysmal. So I don't get it.

I don't understand this. This sickness plaguing my mind like a small parasite. It feeds off my negative thoughts and regurgitates even more horrible thoughts. Where the burning sun of a typical California day feels so bleak and empty. Lacking. Lackluster. It's like... a bunch of invisible clouds constantly hovering over me and cascading down its piss and making everything suddenly crappy.

analogy, I know.

I'll just go ahead and call it what it is. I believe as you already know it obviously starts with a D and ends with an N. Okay, what does that spell? Sadness, absolute pure sadness. No, wait, that's the wrong word. Oh, right, depression. I have depression.

I feel like it slowly creeps up on you. Like, one day you are just fine and dandy and then all of a sudden, it’s not. You're not fine. You're not content with life and every ing day feels exhausting. This tiny little imp named depression crawls upon your shoulders and bites into your flesh. Better yet, every night when I sleep, I see the damned demon at the end of my bed, so no, I don't bother falling asleep until it's three in the morning.

Maybe it is a thing everyone experience at some point in their lives. Like a tradition. A ing horrible tradition where everyone contemplates life and its various of meanings. As for myself? I have no clue what my life is, where I'm going, and if I'll ever make it to the end. Perhaps these internal feelings only fuel the insecure thoughts of my self-worth...- I don't know. I just don't really bother to think about it. I rarely think about anything, frankly speaking.

My parents took me to a local therapist for some help. Most of the time I spent my days there rotting in an artificially decorated room with an AI imposing as a human being that would ask me redundant questions about typical stuff like feelings. Like, how do I feel? What can I do to make things better? What are the alternatives? How are you feeling this week? Have you written inside your journal? Have you? Have you done this? That? Please share the details of how miserable you are and desire a permanent slumber.

Same thing, different day. But there were moments I appreciated expelling my deepest thoughts without a look of surprise, of shock, of anger or of any pity. I can just sit in a chair and cry to my heart's content about how ty my day would be and the doc stares at me like every other client, stoic as hell. At least none of my business will be spread around unlike the people at school who share information like it's the latest magazine gossip.

I tried them. The prescriptions, the drugs, the powder wrapped up in tiny capsule pills. It worked for a brief period in my life until I began to use them outside of scheduled times. I didn't really care of the aftermath of a sore stomach and crippling kidneys, nor really the lingering sensation of external numbness blanketing over me for days on end. It helped me escape the struggles of daily life and its horrid hell, but unfortunately, my family couldn't pay the doctor and I eventually abandoned therapy.

This brings us to our current situation. The situation which I repeatedly involve myself in because it brings me relaxation and peace and everything pleasant other than the piled homework and wacked grades ranging from averaged B's to maybe one A, and then there's the dumpster fire of hanging C's and that one single F my physics teacher graded me last week because I couldn't write an essay. And it's true, I didn't. I just stamped, 'Here lies Aubrey Dennison' in the fanciest sketch work inspired by that old Spongebob episode. Truthfully, I was having a massive burnout and that 'essay' was the result of it.

He can off for all I care.

My thumb rapidly clicks the black button of my Vaporesso VM SOLO 22 and waited until the light flashed a few times. It is a cylinder, sleek model coated in silver and adequately rounded, yet ring sized glass piece for the tank. I recently managed to get this mod at this local vape shop from downtown.

And yeah, before anyone sprouts at me about legality... yes, I'm under twenty one, and no, I don't give a . It wouldn't be much of an issue until lawmakers decided to stick their rich wrinkled old noses in it. Though, suppose it's due to the stashed hoard of fake IDs I have, so it comes with the convenience of getting my fix. Oh, and not to mention these so-called Vape Nation weebs getting ahold on my personal recreational hobby and making it so cringeworthy.

Those bastards in government should be focusing on other things like homelessness, mental health and environmental epidemic crisis, but no, they're too preoccupied banning straws than getting people actual help.

I pressed the tip piece of my mod into my mouth, thumb also pressed against the button and inhale. Ahh god, this sounds so wrong. It's like I'm getting this high, but instead of floating I just feel content and mellowed. Hazelnut scotched coffee filters my tongue and slithers down my throat. Mind you, it's not literal coffee but I managed to mix some e-juices together to combine this ideal flavor. I exhale, and a cool steam of vapor pours out of my nostrils along with my lips. I lean against the wooden table and lazily take another drag, eyes observing the scenery around me.

The warmth cascading around me. The high-pitched screams, the ungodly squeals of colorful children playing around in a large dry field of green. Parents were roaming around while others sat on benches, and then there were few of the homeless bystanders resting underneath the towering oak trees. My brown eyes soon linger in the sky and noticed how the shapes of clouds were forming into these ugly little figures. Deformed elephants, bow-legged and one armed Jesus, some weird mish mash of clouds humping each other and some broken necked birds...

The obnoxious sounds of traffic constantly grate against my ears. It's already at this point within seventeen years of living that I am used to the ridiculous screeches of tires, honks of motorbikes and constant noises.

I take another hit.

Anxiety.

A monster hidden inside the depths of the consciousness. A demon, an imp, a subtle shadow whispering in your head all the problems until it festers into something disastrous.

Anxiety.

My own monster to battle and my own battle to win. Furthermore, much to my misfortune, not everyone's battles can be fought the same way. The constant constriction of my chest whenever I gasp out for whatever smoldering oxygen to inhale. My fears manifesting right before me to reinforce all the problems around me. How everything ends in uttermost failure... and that there's nothing I can do to resolve it.

Of course. Of course! It's all inside my head and reality just displacing this illusion. However, this so-called 'anxiety' worsened since junior year. At that point in my life I realized there wasn't a need to continue fighting anymore.

Before getting off into this vape scene lifestyle I fooled around with cigarettes. Ya know? The cheap nasty ones your friend of a friend whose cousin's older sibling got the goodies and stuff. I managed to buy one off of them, only to then choke at the sudden inhalation of crusted dirty smoke that ranked of dead ashes rolled into burnt thin paper. Point blank the stanked, which then meant that I reeked of it and had to strip off my clothes and shove them into the washing machine before anyone could notice anything, let alone smell the scent of it. Needless to say, I don't like cigarettes.

I experimented with other things before. Ya know? , hookahs, cigars and other things that blows clouds. They're all decent, but I never really cared much for them except an occasional social gathering with my friends. Is it bad? Yes. Should I care? Probably, but not really.

Why? I found my own solution to the problem. Like those with asthma needing their inhalers, I clung to the dirtied ashes sprinkled with nicotine rolled up in thin paper. At least, for a little while I did before quickly transitioning to vape disposable pens. Managed to buy some off my school's black market system...- a.k.a that one grunge-looking guy known to carry the high-class stuff. Long story short, it's been a good two years and I'm still finding comfort huffing vapor with clean nicotine.

Though, I wasn't showin' out like about it like people are now. Hah, acting all superior and because mommy allows them to vape. Somewhere along the way this surge of teenagers began to carry a vape mod like it's some social status. And maybe it is, I don't know, I never took the time to care until recently. Suppose it is a new bandwagon trend that everyone's desperate to hop on to fulfill some sort of achievement in their lives. As for myself, regardless of the perception towards vaping I still feel the same.

A wanderer trying to belong somewhere in this nameless society.

It was an average Friday where I already abandoned my final class and immediately headed over to the local park. Mae and Becky told me they are heading over shortly after finishing up with their afterschool art class. Sometimes when things weren't interesting, we'd hit it up at the park and start mixing and matching vape mods. Other times we'll hang out a gelato shop or cafe...- whatever interests us and if we're not broke by the end of week.

The scorching heat of the sun only burns deeper into my honey melanin if it wasn't for the thick shadowing shade of this tree. My maroon colored tank top clung loosely to my broad shoulders as the tight denim shorts wrapped around my long and slender thighs. I decided to go ahead and pull these obnoxious crinkles for black hair in a bun since it's hot and dry, I'm sweating as hell and don't need to rewash my hair this week.

I've been lounging around for about a good thirty minutes now. Observing the tranquility, the unique inhabitants wandering around ambitious streets of Downtown Sacramento. The towering palm trees, the bright and colorful buildings all squished together in this tightly jammed packed area. In fact, there was literally a amphitheater shoved in-between two modern boutique stores. Intense heat, tons of cafes lined up in rows, we then have health fanatics infiltrating the area to spread conscious eating and... oh, right. Heat.

"Hey Bre!"

"Hey."

I look over my shoulders to find two girls walking towards me. One was of Chinese descent, Mae, as my other friend Becky was crossed between Irish, Latino, and a quarter of Greek. The girls sat down on the other end of the bench and I spun myself around to directly face them. They were splattered in a variety of colors on their blank white t-shirts and blue jeans and shoulder-length hair, one jet black and the other richly reddened, pulled into messy ponytails with bits of paint on the edges of their hair. They plopped in the nearly rotting wooden seats and I handed over my electric vape mod.

They both took separate turns puffing on the mod.

Thick clouds of white along with the lingering scent of coffee danced around my face. I remained unfazed, breathing in this vapor with uttermost starvation. "Class's been a total . Mrs. Silvester was wanting us to practice the modern concepts of impressionism using oils. After that everyone did another self portrait and abandoned ship before it sunked." Becky states, rolling her eyes before taking another hit, "This flavor is too much on the coffee beaned side." She scowls in mild distaste.

It was my turn to roll my eyes. "Beck, I just added a new juice yesterday. What else did you think it was?"

"I don't know. A snickers or some like that."

"Whatever. You're just being picky as usual."

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I ended up breaking mines." Mae finally spoke up and somehow breaking this invisible tension-but-not-really-tension between Beck and I. "How the hell that'd happened? I just gave you one last Thursday." Eyebrows furrowed, I couldn't help but to narrow my eyes at the young girl with her face freckled in crusted paint. I don't want to come across as some stingy but that model I gave Mae for free was a Freemax Twister 80W, a new model that just came out and being ridiculously expensive, mind you.

Mae only shrugs. Her dainty shoulders reaching high to her beige thin neck before slumping back down. "I had it in my back pocket," her small hands reached out and started making these animated motions as her voice continued to speak. "I was walking my dogs and they had to take a poop. So after they finished pooping I was cleaning up and I heard a crack! I looked around and noticed it was broken."

I groaned.

"Mae, this is the third time you've broke my mods."

"I know..." Mae whines. "I think I'm naturally clumsy. I mean, I broke my mom's vase yesterday without even trying!" She exclaims and buries her face into the palms of her hands. "I'm cursed with this. I thought I lost my sculpting knife and had to look everywhere for it, only to realize in was stuck in my apron... and then bit of my apron gotten torn due to it." It's at this point I decided to give Sarah some slack with a simple sigh.

"Okay, I get it Mae. But I can't lend you anymore mods because I'm only down to four left and those are my favorite collectibles."

"Fine." Mae pouts.

"Speaking of which, I've been practicing on some neat tricks." I snatched the pen from Beck's grasp and nearly engulfed the tip piece. A sharp inhale with vapor entering through my mouth and into my lungs. I decided to create a larger form of a circle with my rounded lips-

"Do another one Namjoon!"

"Ohh!"

And I choke. Choking like an ugly fish out of water begging for relief. My fingers were clutched around my throat as I wheeze, trying to recollect myself from the initial shock. "What the absolute ?" Me, along with Mae and Becky looked straight at a group of dudes. Korean looking dudes, mind you, and there were about seven of them. By the looks of it they were circling around one guy blowing large clouds and making a chain of smoke rings.

Oh, great. It's them again.

I'm not trying to complain or whatever, but I noticed within the past two weeks that those same dudes would show up every Friday, and I mean every Friday. Not to mention Saturday nights blowing up the park with their stup