cold coloured pills

A Chapter by rachelgeorgina

A reflection on the experience of psychatric medication. Here, the character discusses the physical and emotional responses to and concquences of psychatric medications and the impact of the ingestion of these drugs on life - living, even more so.

It’s like I broke something. & I did it on purpose.

~

It's the drugs that make functioning seem like a vaugely plausible option. Instead of lying on the cold tiles of the bathroom floor, head lost piles of your own hair matted with your own vomit, there is a possibility that you can crawl the few feet into the shower & turn on the taps, in some sort of mismatched attempt to rid yourself of pieces of the disease that you have become. Swallowing a collection of cold, coloured pills every night - first the yellow, then the two tiny pink ones, and lastly the collection of differently shaped white ones - make killing yourself an option, instead of the only choice. Perhaps life does not need to be some sort of complex tradgey, and you can merely be present (albeit silent) in your own life, instead of the kicking & screaming character, breaking sets & bones & hearts.

The disconnection that leaves you completely out of sync with yourself is a calm, quiet relief. It's easier than being inside yourself - feeling desperate and sad and broken, and never finding a piece to put back into the puzzle. There is no road to mending, so being apart from it is the next best option. In some sort of silent prayer, you thank the silver foil packets that you empty and dispose of more rapidly than you can keep count of. 'Thank you,' you think, addressing some unknown entity. Of course you aren't even sure what thankful feels like, because you have become so empty, void & numb - but it seems appropriate to say, anyway.

The reality of it seems to be some sort of cruel joke. A handful of coloured pills? you think to yourself, beginning to rage. A hand (yours) slams down on the counter, scattering the small solid shapes in front of you. Six f*****g little pills? Is this all you've become? A handful of powdered chemicals, disolved, when swallowed, into the bloodstream? The complexity of it is to much for your quieted mind. The arguments long since silenced, you do not function so much as merely exist - wandering through your life as if you were your own ghost - dead to the world. This is it. You are dead in all but what seems to be a physical complication. & these are keeping you alive. These taunting little pieces of crap, supposed to "help" you (because you're sure that's what the doctors said, as they signed prescription after prescription) have killed any little part of being that might be left, unengaged within the mess that was you.

Now you are nothing. Simply an almost-ghost. & all you have to thank is a handful of drugs, a glass of water & night after night of sleeping through hell, only to wake up back in the circles of it again.