Take Your Medicine

This is unfinished. But it's a small portion of my story. It's 100% true. Do not be afraid to be yourself. Whether you fit in or not, you should not be changed artificially.

I can still remember being 8 years old and forced to take medication for mental illness.

My father was restless with me, and when I refused to swallow the pill, he forced me to. I threw it up, and he shouted at me, made me swallow it down again.

This continued until I finally managed the keep it down, dissolving into my stomach.

I learned how to take medication. I learned how inhuman I was.

I realized their benefit, how these plastic tasting dissolving rocks would keep me sane.

But I didn’t want them.

I didn’t need them.

I knew I must take them, but I was afraid. Afraid of being altered, losing myself.

I imagine my parents were too.

Over the years of bullying from the start of preschool, the lack of friends, it hurt me, maybe them too.

Maybe they thought that it would change me.

That it would make me a better son.

I wasn’t normal, maybe it was the mental illness, maybe it was the way they raised me.

Maybe I wasn’t good enough.

The medication didn’t make me a better person.

It did change me though.

It brought me into a depression at 8 years old.

It made me cry, and through that, it made me weak.

I knew I wasn’t good enough for my father. He would always be disappointed.

I did what I could to please him, but eventually, I realized I could not prove my sincerity.

My effort, my worth.

My weakness tore my family apart. My sickness, my savagery.

I spent most of my childhood alone. My family refused to be there for me.

I fought with other kids. I didn’t know how to socialize, or make friends. I was an outcast.

If I wasn’t ill, it could have been different. But I’m not. I’m ill, even at 21 years old.

But when Mom decided to leave, she wanted to take me with her.

I was 4 years old. She waited for me at the front door to our suburban sanctuary.

Maybe I would never see it again. I was afraid. I felt guilty. I felt worthless, like a burden.

A folding chair that was better left under the gymnasium at school, in the darkness.

Where it wouldn’t waste space.

Dad told me I destroyed their marriage. That I was a horrible child. He mocked me.

He said you're going to take everything from your dear old dad.

You sucked the love out of us both.

I refused to go with mom, she felt betrayed, but how could I do that? How could I destroy the love, the only security I had known? And this stopped her.

I wouldn’t have been the person I am if this hadn’t happened.

Everything would have been different.

I wouldn’t even have a sister.

Would it have been easier? Better even? Or am I simply lying to myself, I don’t know.

This decision wasn’t because I felt loved by my father that I begged Mom to stay.

It was because Mom was never home.

She went to work before I got up, and came home later than I’d fall asleep.

She promised to see me soon every time I saw her, but that was only once every few weeks.

The pain of not being good enough for my father might be the reason I took that medication.

It might be the cause of my mental illness, to begin with. It might be the case of my emptiness, my insecurity, my depression, my insanity.

I would do anything for his attention at first, but the way he treated me hurt, and I began to hate him. By the time I started taking medication regularly, I was in fifth grade. I was happy, I had friends, I could concentrate somehow, and for the first time, I was proud.

I was the class clown; I enjoyed trying to make people laugh, even if it was temporary.

My marks at school became more A’s than B’s, while it was once more C’s than B’s. I went from a problem child to someone who was accepted, even if I wasn’t necessarily garnered.

But while the effects of the medication came into play positively, as did the side effects cause trauma and emotions I didn’t know. It hit me around the end of fifth grade.

I was in a bad place with my family, the pride they began to have in me, made them push me harder for marks, and they had me switch schools. They wanted more from me, I wish that was plausible.

But beneath the pride, there was no solace, no prosperity, only grey half-acceptance.

Waiting for the next straw on the camel’s back, the weight that would force my dreams taking flight, to struggle, grounded in reality. I just couldn’t handle it. I gave out sometime that summer, I didn’t even know I had been broken yet.

The medication that helped me cope with ADHD, which stands for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, caused anxiety to form, depression, and other disorders to follow like OCD, bipolar and schizophrenia. All unearthed by this medicine. By the time this happened, school had just started. I have few to no memories of this time, simply because it was that damaging for me. I forcefully made myself forget what happened to avoid suffering. I mainly remember being alone, isolated.

But I know that I spent every day at school crying, only to come home to a disappointed father that blamed me for his failed marriage a neglecting mother who spent more time working than sleeping, and a happy clueless sister who was a better child that I could ever hope to be in my parents' eyes.

I was nothing. I’d like to say something like: “But do you know who was truly there for me? When no one else was?”

But no. That would be a lie. No one was.

 I suppose it’s selfish to just write for my own point of view. My family members have all suffered. But human beings do not understand human suffering. So I suffered silently, this is the only nirvana there can be for someone like me, self-acceptance. I am still trying to reach that golden threshold, that cloud nine.

And with the bullying so bad that I had scars to prove it happened, I changed from someone strong, with friends but needing a little guidance into someone everyone forgot. Like a disposable plastic bag, I drifted in and out of suicidal tendencies, and never managed to dry myself of the clammy depression that stuck to me, raining my drained soul, and my emotions on my mind. And drowning me in its depths.

6th grade was supposed to be the worst year of my life.

It was not. I was abused by the other students. I had no friends. Teachers were the closest thing to that. My parents did not care. They did not understand. That couldn’t notice, and couldn’t love. The medication loved me. The medication was proud of my accomplishments, my act, my game for attention.

And when they took me to the psyche ward at 13 after my attempt at suicide, my plea for cushy feelings, my need for love. And when I was ignored like any worthless s**t stain would be.

The medication made it bearable. Beautiful. It put on the facade of plastic sanity like a smiling mask. It completed me. It became me. And it never left. I came out of that hospital angry. I came out afraid, and egoless. I came out bent out of shape, mangled. But I was alive. Because I had tricked myself into believing that life was still worthwhile.

The hospital came back. The teachers visited me, but I never left. Eventually, the hospital was the mould that shaped me into someone different, slipping in and out of school and psychosis. I spent 2 and a half years in the hospital. When I came out I had gained 50 pounds, lost my ability to speak, my physique, that I was so proud of, and my ability to run. I was once the faster runner in middle school. I could barely walk.

I lost my logical brain, I lost my ability to write music, I lost my ability to dream, to imagine. I never got enough of this back. Only the knowledge that I had been better, and a gratitude to have ever had such gifts. I will never take what I have for granted again.

My parents talked about “the old me”, and how I used to be so great, before my fall from grace. Before I was broken.  It made me feel like a remnant of what could have been, what I almost had, but couldn’t quite reach or comprehend. It was a tragedy. Someone had died and they were still living.

The medication didn’t care. It accepted me. And I felt nothing but relief. And emptiness, which was better than worthlessness.

Since then I have been on around 16 pills per day.

And a spray and eye drop to stop me from choking on my own spit while I sleep, one of many dozens of side effects I suffer from. My parents say I may need a heart transplant and lung transplants. The chances of getting these things are slim. The chance of early death isn’t so uncommon. I’m slowly falling. I hope I hit the floor lightly.

I’ve recovered so much of what I’ve lost, not all of it, but maybe, just maybe, I could have avoided this if I had just coughed up that devil's pill. Avoided that dead end, the one-way ticket to depression that cornered me. Medicine should heal, rather than control. I still suffer from mental illness and depression. Anxiety and traumatic memories that made me into a different person. Relationships with family and friends are better than they used to be. Life is far better now, but now I’m addicted to the medication that I feel caused this pain and loss of self in the first place. I need it now, just to get through the day. In fact, doctors are telling me I need more, as my body is getting used to the dosage, a relies on it.

I could be hospitalized again, forced to take the medicine. More and more. Sometimes I vomit. It tastes like self-love, it takes like euphoria and lies, it tastes like illusions, and plastic perfection, it tastes like me.

And if I lose myself again, I’ll be forced to comply. It no longer gives me an edge, but without it, life is unbearable. And without it, I would never be able to cope.I try to lift off the mask off my face sometimes even now, trying to grasp at a boy’s that passed away long before the wave of life’s cemetery, long before today, but that would be impossible. That person has faded away. That boy is nothing but a picture frame.

I’d no longer be myself if I stopped wearing this mask. I’d just be another failure. Another falsehood, a flaw on the face of society. A blemish on the diamond of humanity. The plastic perfection is not a diamond. And although it’s hard to swallow, glittering beauty is not gold. It will rot to nothingness eventually. Not today, I still remain. I take my medicine. I wait for a salvation that will never come.

Not good enough for anyone.

No one is so stupid to believe that a piece of plastic you swallow will cure you. They simply wish to make you like them. If you want freedom and love, if you want to be the best you can, if you want to think for yourself, then be yourself. Your mind works the way it does for a reason. Wisdom should not be restrained. Spirits should not be drained.

I still have dreams. I like long hikes. I snowboard. I go to college and took a university poetry course. I write, I have friends and family I love, and I play the clarinet. I am a homo-sapien of my own kind. I will never be broken and shackled of my own fruition again. I will not let doctors who judge me as inadequate to take that away from me. Do not take medication, unless it will heal you. Normal is not good. It is simply monotonous. It is a stagnated, broken, and rotten lie. You have the right to be yourself. Psychiatrists do not take the medications they prescribe. Drugs that alter minds will not make you clean.  It will just hide you behind a plastic sunrise, a mask of human perfection. That is far less real than an actual human being.

Be a unique homo-sapien.

Love yourself.

Be yourself.

And live.

Author's Note

Medicine heals, it does not control.

I very seldom reply to reviews, but I promise I read EVERY single one. I look forward to my next review because it helps me learn. Even if it's just one word, I promise, I will be ecstatic to have the chance to hear what you have to say. Whenever you write something about my poems, or the themes of my poems, or criticize me it is not in vain. I will listen, learn and be thankful.