Pages

2.18.2015

eleven o'clock on a wednesday

I am sitting in Molly's office again, but everything is different. Her new office is in a wealthy suburb that takes me half an hour to reach. The lobby of the building sparkles with marble floors and carefully placed black leather chairs. Once I came in to find a woman setting up an enormous golden harp.

She left the recovery center. I found out. I made an appointment.

It's both comforting and strange.

...

I'd heard the ads on the radio, the tv, and all over the internet. "Side effects may include suicidal thoughts or actions..." I'd heard them so much, I became immune. Then my meds changed and so did I. It was as though some outside force had possessed my mind. My thoughts are often toxic, but they are mine. They belong to me. This was different. These were not mine. I hope you never experience what it's like to have thoughts that don't belong to you like some sort of deadly alien virus.

I'd told myself to die a million times, but I'd never told myself to die when I didn't want to.

...

I hate roller coasters. 

I always say no, but every once and a while I find myself clutching the metal seat restraint as we go up and up and up and up. Everyone around me is shrieking in excitement and fear. I am white-knuckled, silent, waiting for the drop. And when it comes I don't scream and wave my arms in the air. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the ride to stop.

The drop isn't the worst part. The worst part is going up.

When things are good, I go up. I feel like I can do this thing called life. I make appointments. I finish chores. I shower and do my makeup and hair. I make plans and I then I follow through. And it's elating, feeling like maybe everything is going to be alright, maybe I'm going to be alright. But there's always a knot at the bottom of my stomach because I don't know when I will drop. 

And then I do. And it feels like an old cartoon where I'm carrying an anvil above my head, thinking it's something else. I was holding it up just fine until I looked at it. Then it crushed me. In the cartoon a laugh track would play, and I'd comically run around all squished for a while. In real life, I'm just stuck there, under that anvil. And it's crushing and awful, but worse is knowing that I was stupid enough to run around arrogantly carrying it in the first place.

...

Writing is so hard these days and I don't know why.