Filed under: Dangerously Close To Sentiment
[Before you read any further: this is an expanded version of some private scribbling I did during events taking place in the early part of 2013. Depression has been a part of my life for longer than I can remember, and I find myself writing about it a lot. Most of it stays private, but I guess there’s something about a public confession that’s oddly appealing. Although I’ve just written this, it’s a snapshot, a reprint of a postcard from my brain when I was struggling somewhat. I shouldn’t have to say that not taking your medication is a terrible idea. Fortunately, I’m doing really well these days and intend to keep it that way.]
It might not be a good idea. But it’s exhilarating.
You just stop taking them. You don’t stop for long: if you leave it for too long, bad things happen. You don’t stop very often. Most of the time you don’t even want to, it doesn’t even occur to you. But sometimes, maybe once a year, you feel like you want…something. So you stop.
It is heady, and it’s familiar. It’s visiting a place that’s too wild to inhabit, though somehow once you did. You feel things. It’s not like you don’t feel things usually. Things don’t feel muted. Not really. But here: emotions rush at you, engulf you. It’s beautiful. Everything means something. Feeling pulses through you, crackles in your brain and it’s like running across the sky. Alive.
Your hands want to make things. Tastes are technicolour and there’s pleasure in satiety. There’s satiety. Your polite libido suddenly twists within you and the nape of a neck makes you catch your breath. Poems fall from your brain into your fingers and maybe they’re terrible but it’s okay because for once they’re not for an audience.
You weep a lot. You feel a little dizzy, shaky. There’s a pulse in your head, but it passes. You know what it means, though.
You can’t stay.
Sometimes you want to. You’ve tried, but if you linger too long in the bracing air it turns into a dull, aching cold. Emotion grows exhausting, and you want to hide. It always curdles eventually.
So you start taking them again, and you go home. Even if you’ve made sure it’s only been a short journey, it’s a relief to be warm and dry. You feel a little sheepish. You interact with yourself like it’s the day after you’ve been roaring drunk, hopped up on emotion. A bit embarrassing, really. You get on with things. You’re okay. This is what you’ve chosen. This is the world in which you want to live: a picture where the colours are correctly adjusted.
But, you know – sometimes you think of it.
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Amy Tries Again 
When I stop taking my medication I feel no different than on it… for two days then it gets bad. I don’t get off those interesting good bits though.
That’s probably for the best. I only miss my medication when I forget and that’s rare.
Comment by ThatGuy January 1, 2014 @ 12:48 AM